Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
CHIME telescope | |
| Location(s) | Okanagan Falls, Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen, British Columbia, Canada |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 49°19′15″N 119°37′25″W / 49.3208°N 119.6236°W |
| Organization | Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory McGill University University of British Columbia University of Toronto |
| Altitude | 545 m (1,788 ft) |
| Wavelength | 37 cm (810 MHz)–75 cm (400 MHz) |
| Diameter | |
| Length | 100 m (328 ft 1 in) |
| Width | 20 m (65 ft 7 in) |
| Collecting area | 8,000 m2 (86,000 sq ft) |
| Website | chime-experiment |
| Related media on Commons | |
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is an interferometric radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada which consists of four antennas consisting of 100 x 20 metre cylindrical parabolic reflectors with 1024 dual-polarization radio receivers suspended on a support above them. The antenna receives radio waves from hydrogen in space at frequencies in the 400–800 MHz range. The telescope's low-noise amplifiers are built with components adapted from the cellphone industry and its data processed using a custom-built FPGA electronic system and 1000-processor high-performance GPGPU cluster. The telescope has no moving parts and observes half of the sky each day as the Earth turns.
It has also turned out to be a great instrument for observing fast radio bursts (FRBs).
CHIME is a partnership between the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Toronto and the Canadian National Research Council's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. A first light ceremony was held on 7 September 2017 to inaugurate the commissioning phase.