Due to COVID-19 the March 2022 meeting of the Projects Peer Review Panel (PPRP) will now take place virtually via Zoom. The presentation and Q&A session for the proposal is still open to members of the science community to observe. The Panel will be reviewing one proposals. Anyone who wishes to attend should contact Roy Stephen who will send them the Zoom details for the meeting.
The proposals being reviewed, and time of review is as follows:
08th March 2022 from 12.00 – 13.30 hrs : e-MERLIN/VLBI National Facility Operations 2023-28
e-MERLIN is a network of 7 large radio telescopes, including the 76-m Lovell Telescope, across England, operated from Jodrell Bank Observatory as a national facility for UK and international astronomers. By combining the signals from these dishes, which have a maximum separation of 217km, e-MERLIN produces high resolution radio images with a level of detail comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope (and the James Webb Telescope soon to be launched). This resolution at centimetre radio wavelengths is a powerful and unique capability, which allows e-MERLIN to address many of the key questions (frontier physics) faced by today’s astrophysicists and include: imaging the formation of planets from pebble-sized material around young stars; studying the physics of the process of star formation; investigating the evolution of galaxies, including how and when they form the bulk of their stars and testing the role of super-massive back holes in controlling the rate of star formation; tracing the distribution of dark matter via the distortions in radio images produced by gravity; studying new phenomena such as fast radio bursts – brief millisecond flashes of radio emission visible from distant galaxies.
In all these cases radio astronomy brings a unique contribution: it detects high energy material or processes often not visible in other wavebands and it can probe the dusty regions of space where planets and stars form, often obscured to optical telescopes. This project will keep e-MERLIN at the forefront of international astronomy in the period while the Square Kilometre Array is being constructed in Australia and South Africa and will help the UK to maximise the scientific return on its investment in SKA, by training the community and providing the only current facility with comparable frequency and resolution.
In order to keep e-MERLIN operating efficiently and to allow it to further improve its capabilities we also plan to replace key parts of its digital infrastructure, include data acquisition electronics, data links, the central data processor; and we also plan to start the process of building a suite of new receivers at 8-16 GHz which will be important for studies such as planet formation. At the same time we plan to incorporate antennas at Goonhilly in Cornwall to further increase the resolution of e-MERLIN. E-MERLIN has a wide range of impacts across key science areas but also in training scientists and inspiring future scientists. The Jodrell Bank site is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognising its unique contribution to the development of radio astronomy as well as its continuing contribution via e-MERLIN. The co-location of the e-MERLIN hub, the World Heritage Site, the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and the HQ of the international Square Kilometre Array Observatory all at Jodrell Bank is a powerful combination underpinned by the word-class science being done by e-MERLIN.
Roy Stephen
roy.stephen@stfc.ukri.org