Improving Image Fidelity on Astronomical Data: Radio Interferometer and Single-Dish Data Combination

Description and aim:

Most of the areas of study in astronomy, such as star formation, the study of extragalactic sources, characterization of solar features, the evolution of stars and planetary nebulae, depend on high spatial dynamic range observations that provide information on both the diffuse, extended emission and compact, localized objects where astrophysical processes happen. In the last decade, facilities such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) or the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), among others, aim at providing extremely high fidelity images by combining observations at high-spatial resolution (from interferometers) with lower-spatial resolution (from single-dish telescopes). Therefore and in order to get the full picture, i.e. recovering spatial scales over several orders of magnitude, one needs to combine the emission seen by interferometers with emission detected by single-dish telescopes. However, combining data from single-dish and interferometric telescopes certainly pose a number of severe technical limitations that have not been solved yet.

In this workshop, we will convene the leading experts in interferometry and single-dish combination techniques across the world, with participants with a wide range in experience with interferometry and single-dish data, and data combination. We aim to understand, compare, and test the various methods of data combination. Participants of this workshop will illustrate the need of data combination with real science cases, will present current methods, and discuss each method’s strengths and weaknesses. In addition to scientific talks from key invited speakers; the workshop also includes technical talks covering the various techniques and a number of hands-on sessions to test and work on the different combination methods. By the end of the workshop we aim to develop user guides for the respective existing methods, provide guidelines as to which method could perform better under which circumstances, and if needed propose additional new methods that should be developed.

Registration deadline: 1st of May

Scientific organizers:

Yanett Contreras (Leiden, The Netherlands)

Hauyu Liu (Taipei, Taiwan)

Adele Plunkett (Charlottesville, USA)

Alvaro Sanchez-Monge (Cologne, Germany)