1. 76-m Lovell Telescope Jodrell Bank, UK Even big telescopes see no more detail than the naked eye High bandwidth data transfer - the future of European radio astronomy S. Garrington Jodrell Bank Observatory U.Manchester/e-MERLIN UK on behalf of the European VLBI Network (EVN) New astronomical discoveries demand greater resolution and sensitivity Telescope networks provide resolution … but sensitivity limited by tape recording At faintest levels, radio sky teems with galaxies Radio emission comes from birth and death of stars, often hidden by dust from optical telescopes … but network provides 50 x more detail than Hubble Space Telescope

2. 2 Demonstrations using Géant Rapid move to disk buffering (MIT, JIVE, Metsahovi) at 0.5, 1 Gb/s High-speed transfer is next European demonstrations using GEANT core network –specialised transfer s/w using UDP –iGrid2002: Tape/Disk 500 Mb/s transfer Man-Ams 24/09/02 –First disk-disk test Jodrell Bank(UK)-Westerbork(NL) 24/10/02 data transferred via SJ4/Geant/SURFnet correlated at JIVE within hours S Parsley (JIVE), R Hughes-Jones, R Spencer, P Burgess (Manchester)

3. 3 Dante/EVN Proof Of Concept Network requirements –5 or 6 telescopes connected at 1-2 Gb/s each –Real time transfer to correlator at Dwingeloo NL –Continuous transfer for 24hr observations Agreed in principle by Dante/NRENs Local loops being pursued now in UK, DE, NL, SWE, IT, PL Expect science results by Nov 2004 Future usage (2005) Routine operation for up to 16 telescopes across Europe & China at 1 Gb/s for ~50 days/yr Rapid response to transient events (eg GRBs, SNe) Link to UK e-MERLIN network and global VLBI network With a new correlator (>2007) 40 - 80 Gb/s per telescope

4. 4 Future Network Strong scientific and technical motivation for e-VLBI using research networks –flexibility & immediate response –reliability & faster development –greater sensitivity via bandwidth Plausible network connections to all EVN telescopes via Géant local loops going in now Real-time demo by 2004 1 Gb/s from 5 telescopes Processed observations ~ TB/day –remote access/processing on the GRID: Virtual Observatory GEANT + NRENs can enable ‘always-on’ radio telescope across Europe High bandwidth connection will allow us to exploit true potential of distributed network of European radio telescopes (and radio astronomers!)