Time smearing
 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (June 2012) |
Time smearing or time-average smearing is the degradation of the reconstructed image of a
observed by a ground-based interferometer that occurs because of the duration of the observation. Unlike single telescopes or cameras that can compensate for the Earth's rotation in real time using a dedicated mount, the different telescopes of the interferometer are at fixed positions on the Earth. As a result, maps obtained with interferometers feature elongated orthoradial features similar to those of night sky photographs taken with a fixed tripod
, unless they use short enough integration times.
The smearing is a problem for long integration times or very separated telescopes. Mostly an issue in
very long baseline interferometry
.
See also
References
- Bridle, Alan H. and Schwab, Frederic R., Wide Field Imaging I: Bandwidth and Time-Average Smearing in Synthesis imaging in radio astronomy (1989), eds. Richard A. Perley, Frederic R. Schwab, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, vol. 6, ISBN 0-937707-23-6, p. 247.
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