| Astrophysics (Index) | About |
DSA-2000 (Deep Synoptic Array 2000) is a plan to deploy an array of 2000 5-meter antennas as a radio telescope to detect radio transients. The concept can be thought of as an LSST for radio, over its spectral range of 0.7 to 2 GHz. A 5 year survey is planned with a cadence of 3-4 months, covering the sky above declination -30 degrees. Given the number and placing of the antennas and the survey's planned observation integration time, its imaging is expected to be deconvolution free (a clean image), i.e., the typical clean-up step used in aperture synthesis radio interferometry consisting of a type of deconvolution will be unnecessary. Among its goals is prompt reporting of fast radio bursts (FRBs), with the expectation of detecting thousands of FRBs per year. Over the same five years, some time will be devoted to NANOGrav observations and be used for very-long-baseline interferometry observations. Two preliminary/pilot configurations, located at Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO):
With the growing general interest in FRBs, they have become a primary target of the DSA projects, i.e., offering timely alerts regarding such sub-second transients.
As of 2026, it appears that the DSA-2000 plan has been adjusted: instead of 2000 5-meter dishes, descriptions are of an array of 1650 6.15-meter dishes, and deployment in 2029 (but I speculate its initial operation might be with a subset of the 1650). The number "2000" is apparently dropped from the name, calling it merely the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA).
|