Observing Program

CONT02

Continuous VLBI Campaign 2002

Purpose

CONT02 is a two-week campaign of continuous VLBI sessions, scheduled for observing during October 2002. The CONT02 sessions are the follow-on to the spectacularly successful CONT94 observed in January 1994 and the follow-up CONT95 (August 1995) and CONT96 (fall 1996).

Goals

The plan for the CONT02 campaign is to acquire the best possible state of the art VLBI data over a two-week period to demonstrate the highest accuracy of which VLBI is capable. The scientific and technical goals of CONT02 are: scientific analysis of daily and sub-daily tidal models, VLBI technique improvement for atmosphere studies, reference frame repeatability, and comparisons with other techniques.

Observation Period

The 15 days of continuous VLBI observation have been observed in the period:

• first observation: Wednesday October 16, 2002 @ 1800 UT
• last observation: Thursday October 31, 2002 @ 1745 UT

Network Resources

Participating stations are: Gilmore Creek, Kokee Park, Algonquin, Westford, Ny Alesund, Wettzell, HartRAO, and Onsala. The stations will participate in a pre-check program during the few months before the campaign to ensure that the data acquired will be of the highest quality.

Water Vapor Radiometer (WVR) Data

At several stations water vapor radiometers (WVR) observed the atmospheric water vapor content. You can browse and download the WVR data for the following stations:

• Kokee Park
• Onsala
• Wettzell

Documents and Links

General information about the CONT02 campaign:

• Description of CONT02 program (Word)
• CONT02 program slide (PowerPoint)
• CONT02 press release information (HartRAO web page)

Station tests:

• CONT02 station tests
• CONT02 session notes

Email exploder:

• read CONT02 mail