7-9 February 2011 - Long Baseline Array (LBA) Meeting

The Australian LBA (Long Baseline Array) Annual Meeting was held at AUT University.  During the meeting, CSIRO and AUT signed a letter of intent making AUT's Warkworth 12-m radio telescope part of the Australian long baseline array.

This step will dramatically increase the LBA baseline, adding a very important east-west dimension. Plans for joint Australian-NZ VLBI and eVLBI operations were also discussed at the meeting, along with a range of technical issues, including software correlation, VLBI/eVLBI standards, data acquisition and calibration. The presence of CEOs of AARNet (Chris Hancock) and KAREN (Donald Clark) at the meeting stimulated an extensive discussion of data transfer and eVLBI issues, which are arguably the most critical elements of future SKA.