Short Baseline Observations at Geodetic Observatory Wettzell

Abstract

The Geodetic Observatory Wettzell (GOW), jointly operated by the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), Germany and the Technical University of Munich, Germany is equipped with three radio telescopes for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). Correlation capability is primarily designed for relative positioning of the three Wettzell radio telescopes i.e., to derive the local ties between the three telescopes from VLBI raw data in addition to the conventional terrestrial surveys. A computing cluster forming the GO Wettzell Local Correlator (GOWL) was installed in 2017 as well as the Distributed FX (DiFX) software correlation package and the Haystack Observatory Postprocessing System (HOPS) for fringe fitting and postprocessing of the output. Data pre-processing includes ambiguity resolution (if necessary) as well as the generation of the geodetic database and NGS card files with υ Solve. The final analysis is either carried out with local processing software (LEVIKA short baseline analysis) or with the Vienna VLBI and Satellite (VieVS) software. We will present an overview of the scheduling, correlation and analysis capabilities at GOW and results obtained so. The dataset includes auxiliary files (schedule and log files) which contain information about the participating antenna, observed sources, clock offset between formatter and GPS time, cable delay, meteorological parameters (temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity) and ASCII files created after fringe fitting and final analysis. The published dataset can be used by the researchers and scientists to further explore short baseline interferometry.

Keywords

• VLBI
• geodesy
• FX correlator
• radio telescope
• local ties
• short baseline interferometry
• scheduling