The massive radio observatory is located in the Okanagan Valley outside of Penticton, British Columbia. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment is a telescope that looks like a half-pipe. The National Research Council oversees the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory.
The observatory was supposed to detect radio waves from neutral hydrogen gas. It is used for detecting and studying Fast Radio Bursts. Since it became operational, scientists have been busy sorting through terabytes of data to find signals. Scientists from the University of Montreal have developed a new system for sharing huge amounts of data generated by CHI ME.
The Parkes Radio Telescope was used to detect the first FRB, a famous one called theLorimer Burst. Astronomers have been fascinated by the Transient radio pulse that often lasts mere milliseconds. Astronomers had only detected a small number of FRBs before CHIME. Over 1000 signals have been detected by Chime.
There is still debate about what causes these events. The Earth's rotation is what makes CHIME effective because it relies on no moving parts to monitor the Northern sky. CHIME has a huge field of view and a wide range of frequencies. Being well-suited to the study of FRBs requires a lot of responsibility and hard work.
It takes a small army of researchers and lots of computing power to analyze a Terabyte of raw data a day. It is difficult for other observatories to train their instruments on the source before it disappears since most FRBs only last a few milliseconds. Key details about each FRB can be sent to observatories worldwide in real-time with the new data-sharing system.
Scientists from the University of Montreal developed the system known as the Chime/FRB VOEvent Service. The system relies on the Virtual Observatory event used since 2006 to report events like supernovae and GRBs. The lead developer of the data-sharing service was Andrew Zwaniga, a research assistant in the Department of Physics at McGill.
He said in a press release that the CHIME/FRB service will allow astronomer to train their instruments on FRBs sources and gather further clues that will help uncover the mystery of FRBs. He said that the huge amount of data generated by CHIME and the large number of new FRBs that it finds each day is like a gold mine for the community.
Astronomers have one of the greatest assets in the world: improved information sharing between facilities worldwide. The data generated by the CHIME/FRB project can be fully-exploited if the resources of the international research community are mobilized. It is consistent with the goal of making every CHIMA data accessible to the public so other observatories can conduct follow-up studies with minimal delays.
The alert system was refined by Emily Petroff, a researcher in the Department of Physics at McGill. She said that the international community will help advance the science. She said that since the beginning of the year, it has been like drinking from a fire hose. We need the world's help to get all the science from this.
Anyone with access to a telescope that can point to locations in the Northern will be able to make use of the alert to make follow-up observations of the FRBs detected by CHI ME. Zwaniga said that they have prepared a lot of documentation for new and veteran users of VOEvents. Comments and questions regarding VOEvents from the community can be found on the public-facing CHIME/FRB community GitHub page.
There is open data from the Chime FRB.
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