Aug. 19, 2009 Scientists from NRL's Space Science and Remote
Sensing Divisions, in collaboration with researchers from the
University of New Mexico (UNM) and the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO) located in Socorro, N.M., have generated the
first scientific results from the Long Wavelength Demonstrator
Array (LWDA). The measurements were obtained during field tests
and calibration of two prototype antennas for the much larger
Long Wavelength Array (LWA), which will eventually consist of
nearly 13,000 similar antennas. Utilizing radio emissions from
the approximately 300 year-old Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova
remnant (SNR)—one of the brightest astronomical radio sources in
the sky—to establish baseline measurements, NRL scientist and
National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jake
Hartman utilized the LWDA to confirm and extend a study
initiated by fellow NRL-NRC postdoc Dr. Joseph Helmboldt. Using
NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, Dr. Helmboldt's
research showed that the g