Sparsity and radio interferometry with LOFAR paper published

 
test
Fig. 1 Reconstruction of real Cygnus A radio source LOFAR data with the Sparse imaging method developed by Cosmostat (Click on image to see flickering comparison between VLA contours at 325 MHz and LOFAR color map at 150 MHz)

 The sparsity reconstruction approach find once again a practical application in astronomy.

The CosmoStat group developped a new way (using a FISTA implementation) to solve the aperture synthesis inverse problem posed by radio interferometry imaging. In the scope of LOFAR and SKA, a study has been published demonstrating the performance of the method (in terms of photometry, fidelity, super-resolution) while being compatible with Direction-Dependent effects.

What’s next? This method is currently applied for testing different array configurations of the SKA for weak lensing studies from radio imaging.

New version of the method is being developed during the PhD thesis of Ming Jiang (under supervision of J.-L. Starck and Julien N. Girard)

References

  • Garsden, Girard, Starck, Corbel et al., LOFAR Sparse Image Reconstruction, A&A, Vol. 575, A90 (2015) link to A&A
  • IRFU/CEA news post (in french): here