The Ooty Wide Field Array

We describe here an ongoing upgrade to the legacy Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT).The ORT is a cylindrical parabolic cylinder 530mx30m in size operating at a frequency of 326.5 (or z ~ 3.35 for the HI 21cm line). The telescope has been constructed on a north-south hill slope whose gradient is equal to the latitude of the hill, making it effectively equitorially mounted. The feed consists of an array of 1056 dipoles. The key feature of this upgrade is the digitisation and cross-correlation of the signals of every set of 4-dipoles. This converts the ORT into a 264 element interferometer with a field of view of 2 degrees x 27cos(delta) degrees . This upgraded instrument is called the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA). This paper briefly describes the salient features of the upgrade, as well as its main science drivers. There are three main science drivers viz. (1) Observations of the large scale distribution of HI in the post-reionisation era (2) studies of the propagation of plasma irregularities through the inner heliosphere and (3) blind surveys for transient sources. More details on the upgrade, as well as on the expected science uses can be found in other papers in this special issue.
Comment: To appear in the special section of the JAA on the Ooty Wide Field Array