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Improved Image Quality

The information gathered by an N-element synthesis array varies as tex2html_wrap_inline1076 for large N, so linking four new antennas to the VLBA would double the information content of VLBA observations by doubling the number of correlations, and adding as many as eight new antennas would more than triple the information collected. This increased information content would translate into improved image quality via

World-array experiments have shown that the apparent simplicity of many VLBI images reflects a lack of information gathered about the sources more than any intrinsic simplicity of Nature on these scales. We expect many extragalactic sources to have complex structures on scales from 1 to 100 milli-arcseconds. Physical interpretation of these structures will require ``movies'' with high dynamic range and wide fields of view over a large range in frequency. For studies of rapidly-evolving galactic relativistic-jet sources, we need the ability to construct such ``movies" from snapshots of tex2html_wrap_inline1080 1 hour duration.



Michael Rupen
Fri Mar 26 15:30:00 MST 1999