arXiv subjects

Balthasar Indermuehle

Publications and source records attributed to Balthasar Indermuehle.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A measurement-based approach to EPFD calculation, to quantify the impact of satellite mega-constellations on low-frequency radio astronomy

Context: Satellite mega-constellations generate Unintended Electro-Magnetic Radiation (UEMR) impacting low frequency radio astronomy. The Radio Regulations of the International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) contain the basis for addressing UEMR, but enforcement mechanisms are absent. Aims: To adapt compatibility study methods based on satellite constellation simulations, in particular the Equivalent Power Flux-Density (EPFD) framework, to radio telescope measurements. Methods: We adapt the ITU-R EPFD calculation framework to measurement data obtained from all-sky interferometric imaging. We address the conceptual differences between forward-model EPFD calculations and measurement-based approaches. In particular, we consider low frequency systems, which are typically wide field-of-view and interferometric instruments. Results: For the first time, we demonstrate that all-sky interferometric observations enable a direct adaptation of the EPFD formalism to measurement data. We thus confirm previous estimations (Di Vruno et al. 2023) that the resulting measurement-based EPFD distributions exceed the radio astronomy interference threshold levels defined in Recommendation ITU-R RA.769-2 in 50-70% of samples. These exceedance fractions are well above the 2% single-system data-loss criterion in Recommendation ITU-R RA.1513-2. Expressed using the conventional 2% compatibility margin, the corresponding margins are negative, ranging from -18.6 to -16.3 dB, equivalent to a required uniform attenuation of 16.3-18.6 dB. Conclusions: Measurement-based implementations provide a practical pathway toward verification and long-term monitoring at low radio frequencies, which could form an important component of enforceability. We suggest instrumentation approaches to support measurement.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

Tropospheric Ducting Prediction based on GFS Model Data at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory

Tropospheric ducting transports terrestrial RFI over hundreds of kilometres into the ARQZWA at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. We present a ducting prediction method based on vertical refractivity profiles derived from GFS data, validated against seven years of continuous spectrum monitoring between 88 MHz and 2.68 GHz. Per-transmitter basic transmission loss to the site is computed with Rec ITU-R P.452-16 above 100 MHz and Rec ITU-R P.1812-6 below it, over Copernicus GLO-90 terrain, driven at each timestep by the GFS-derived refractivity lapse along the path. Skill is scored as a stratified AUC, computed within month and three-hour strata. The median stratified AUC is 0.724 and 24 of 25 confidence intervals exclude chance. A time-percentage calibration derived from four pilot months transfers without retuning to the full record, and skill is flat through three days of forecast lead. A pooled GBM on the same physical features, augmented by a duct-corridor connectivity metric, reaches a mean test AUC of 0.806 over all 25 channels and 0.799 over the 16 on which the analytical predictor is itself skilled. In-situ LTE cell decoding confirms attribution: 86-97% of over-the-horizon cell detections fall within flagged event hours, the range spanning the four monitored LTE channels, and the decoded network identities match the licensing records. Ship AIS receptions at 162 MHz, each a self-located 12 W transmitter at a known sea position, provide VHF ground truth. The FM channels retain only weak skill, far below the ducting channels, and we attribute their events to near-threshold local sources after excluding ducting, sporadic-E and aircraft scatter. The method enables adaptive scheduling of observations away from frequencies affected by forecast ducting, and drives a live forecast service at the observatory. (Abstract abridged for arxiv)

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arXiv2026

SNIFFLES I: Intended Emission, Unwanted Emission, and Unintended Radiation from Low-Earth Orbiting Satellites Impacting Radio Astronomy from 1-26 GHz

We present the first results of SNIFFLES, an ongoing observational programme to characterise intended emission, unwanted emission, and unintended radiation from NGSO systems across common radio astronomy receiver bands from 1-26 GHz (L, S, C, X, and K bands). Using the Australian 22 metre Mopra radio telescope near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, with followup observations from a single dish of the ATCA interferometer and its new BIGCAT backend, we conducted 4629 tracked observations of satellites from four NGSO constellations (Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon Leo, and Guowang), amounting to 375.9 hours of telescope time. Satellite identification was confirmed by correlating detected Doppler shifts with predicted ephemerides. We detected 2345 instances of intended emission, unwanted emission, and unintended radiation at 300+ unique frequencies from three of the four systems. The detections span all three interference classes affecting radio astronomy: (1) intended emission (including DTD), (2) unwanted emission (OOBE, including up to the fourth harmonic of the Starlink DTD signal at approximately 2.6 GHz, with the fourth harmonic detected near 10.5 GHz), and (3) unintended radiation from satellite platform electronics. Several detections fall within primary radio astronomy allocations, including 1613.19 MHz within the protected OH line band, and at 2690.76 MHz and 2700 MHz. At 2700 MHz, unintended radiation was detected in 76.9 percent of all observations of the relevant satellite version. ATCA followup measurements confirm flux densities up to eleven orders of magnitude brighter than typical astronomical sources, well in excess of levels that saturate radio astronomy receivers.

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arXiv2026

Towards Genuine Coexistence: Per-Satellite Emission and Radiation Limits to Protect Radio Astronomy and Geodetic VLBI at 1-14 GHz from Satellite Constellations

Geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) is a vulnerable application of the radio astronomy service (RAS): it provides the fundamental link between the celestial and terrestrial reference frames, and is the only technique that uniquely determines UT1-UTC. The next-generation geodetic VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS) achieves millimetre accuracy by synthesising group delay across 3-14 GHz using 32x32 MHz channels, most of which lie outside RAS primary allocations. The SNIFFLES-I survey (Indermuehle et al 2026) measured intended emissions, unwanted emissions (spurious emissions, notably harmonics), and unintended electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) of NGSO systems from 1-26 GHz. On this basis we model the equivalent power flux density (EPFD) of current and future constellations and compare against protection criteria of ITU-R RA.769. The analysis extends to frequencies without radio astronomy allocations where SNIFFLES-I made detections. For geodetic VLBI, we run a Monte-Carlo EPFD model at the AuScope VGOS stations and scale the aggregate from the present catalogued fleet (~12000 satellites) to the hundreds of thousands on file with a validated method. Inverting the EPFD analysis against the interpolated RA.769 thresholds yields maximum tolerable per-satellite levels for spurious emissions and for UEMR, expressed as a field-strength limit in dB(uV/m) at 10 m for standard-setting bodies. We treat proposed orbital-data-centres in Sun-synchronous orbit as a distinctively UEMR-dominated case. We find that already today the single-dish protection criteria are exceeded in two primary RAS bands. For geodetic VLBI, the dominant threat is spurious emission from the 2620 MHz Direct-to-device (DTD) downlink, whose second harmonic at 5240 MHz already causes at least 59% data loss today. (Abstract modified for arxiv limits)

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arXiv2024

Enhanced detection and identification of satellites using an all-sky multi-frequency survey with prototype SKA-Low stations

With the low Earth orbit environment becoming increasingly populated with artificial satellites, rockets, and debris, it is important to understand the effects they have on radio astronomy. In this work, we undertake a multi-frequency, multi-epoch survey with two SKA-Low station prototypes located at the SKA-Low site, to identify and characterise radio frequency emission from orbiting objects and consider their impact on radio astronomy observations. We identified 152 unique satellites across multiple passes in low and medium Earth orbits from 1.6 million full-sky images across 13 selected ${\approx}1$ MHz frequency bands in the SKA-Low frequency range, acquired over almost 20 days of data collection. Our algorithms significantly reduce the rate of satellite misidentification, compared to previous work, validated through simulations to be $<1\%$. Notably, multiple satellites were detected transmitting unintended electromagnetic radiation, as well as several decommissioned satellites likely transmitting when the Sun illuminates their solar panels. We test alternative methods of processing data, which will be deployed for a larger, more systematic survey at SKA-Low frequencies in the near future. The current work establishes a baseline for monitoring satellite transmissions, which will be repeated in future years to assess their evolving impact on radio astronomy observations.

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arXiv2023

Detection of intended and unintended emissions from Starlink satellites in the SKA-Low frequency range, at the SKA-Low site, with an SKA-Low station analog

Intended and unintended radio emissions from satellites can interfere with sensitive radio telescopes in the frequency ranges of key experiments in astrophysics and cosmology. We detect strong intended and unintended electromagnetic radiation from Starlink satellites at the site of the future SKA-Low facility in Western Australia, using an SKA-low prototype station known as the Engineering Development Array version 2 (EDA2). We aim to show that Starlink satellites are easily detectable utilising a configuration of low frequency radio antennas representative of an SKA-Low 'station' and that our results complement similar findings with the LOFAR telescope. Utilising the EDA2 at frequencies of 137.5 MHz and 159.4 MHz, we detect trains of Starlink satellites on 2023-03-17/18 and 2021-11-16/17, respectively, via the formation of all-sky images with a frequency resolution of 0.926 MHz and a time resolution of 2 s. Time differencing techniques are utilised to isolate and characterise the transmissions from Starlink and other satellites. We observe Starlink satellites reaching intensities of $10^6$ Jy/beam, with the detected transmissions exhibiting a range of behaviours, from periodic bursts to steady transmission. The results are notable because they demonstrate that Starlink satellites are detected in the SKA-Low frequency range, transmitting both intentionally and unintentionally. Follow-up work and discussion are needed to identify the cause of this unintentional radiation as it has the potential to interfere with SKA-Low science. Our results indicate that both intended and unintended radiation from Starlink satellites will be detrimental to key SKA science goals without mitigation. Continued conversation with SpaceX could potentially result in future mitigations which the EDA2 instrument could efficiently monitor and characterise at the SKA-Low site.

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arXiv2020

Resolved spectral variations of the centimetre-wavelength continuum from the rho Oph W photo-dissociation-region

Cm-wavelength radio continuum emission in excess of free-free, synchrotron and Rayleigh-Jeans dust emission (excess microwave emission, EME), and often called `anomalous microwave emission', is bright in molecular cloud regions exposed to UV radiation, i.e. in photo-dissociation regions (PDRs). The EME correlates with IR dust emission on degree angular scales. Resolved observations of well-studied PDRs are needed to compare the spectral variations of the cm-continuum with tracers of physical conditions and of the dust grain population. The EME is particularly bright in the regions of the rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud (rho Oph) that surround the earliest type star in the complex, HD 147889, where the peak signal stems from the filament known as the rho Oph-W PDR. Here we report on ATCA observations of rho Oph-W that resolve the width of the filament. We recover extended emission using a variant of non-parametric image synthesis performed in the sky plane. The multi-frequency 17 GHz to 39 GHz mosaics reveal spectral variations in the cm-wavelength continuum. At ~30 arcsec resolutions, the 17-20 GHz intensities follow tightly the mid-IR, Icm propto I(8 um), despite the breakdown of this correlation on larger scales. However, while the 33-39 GHz filament is parallel to IRAC 8 mum, it is offset by 15-20 arcsec towards the UV source. Such morphological differences in frequency reflect spectral variations, which we quantify spectroscopically as a sharp and steepening high-frequency cutoff, interpreted in terms of the spinning dust emission mechanism as a minimum grain size a_cutoff ~ 6 +- 1A that increases deeper into the PDR.

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arXiv2015

The Three-mm Ultimate Mopra Milky Way Survey. I. Survey Overview, Initial Data Releases, and First Results

We describe a new mm-wave molecular-line mapping survey of the southern Galactic Plane and its first data releases. The Three-mm Ultimate Mopra Milky Way Survey (ThrUMMS) maps a 60°x2° sector of our Galaxy's fourth quadrant, using a combination of fast mapping techniques with the Mopra radio telescope, simultaneously in the J=1-0 lines of $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O, and CN near 112 GHz at ~arcminute and ~0.3 km s$^{-1}$ resolution, with ~2 K channel$^{-1}$ sensitivity for $^{12}$CO and ~1 K channel$^{-1}$ for the other transitions. The calibrated data cubes from these observations are made available to the community after processing through our pipeline. Here, we describe the motivation for ThrUMMS, the development of new observing techniques for Mopra, and how these techniques were optimised to the objectives of the survey. We showcase some sample data products and describe the first science results on CO-isotopologue line ratios. These vary dramatically across the Galactic Plane, indicating a very wide range of optical depth and excitation conditions, from warm and translucent to cold and opaque. The population of cold clouds in particular have optical depths for $^{12}$CO easily exceeding 100. We derive a new, nonlinear conversion law from $^{12}$CO integrated intensity to column density, which suggests that the molecular mass traced by CO in the Galactic disk may have been substantially underestimated. This further suggests that some global relationships in disk galaxies, such as star formation laws, may need to be recalibrated. The large ThrUMMS team is proceeding with several other science investigations.

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arXiv2013

A Comparison of the Velocity Parameters of SiO v=1, J=1-0 and J=2-1 Maser Emission in Long Period Variables

We present an analysis of velocity parameters derived from multi-epoch observations of the SiO maser spectra of 47 long period variables (LPVs). The velocity parameters are important to inform and constrain theoretical models of SiO maser emission and to extract information on binary orbits. Mira and R Aquarii (R Aqr) are two known binaries included in the program. The 47 LPVs are among 121 sources of the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) Mopra telescope's monitoring program. Observations were carried out several times a year between 2008 and 2012 and are continuing. The SiO spectra are from the v=1, J=1-0 (43.122 GHz; hereafter J10) and the v=1, J=2-1 (86.2434 GHz; hereafter J21) transitions. For 41 of the 47 LPVs we observed both transitions nearly simultaneously in 457 observations. We have determined and compared the velocity centroids (VCs) and velocity ranges of emission (VRs) suffixed as above (10 and 21) for the two transitions - VC10, VC21, VR10, and VR21. The VCs of the two transitions are, on average, within 0.13 km s-1 of each other but are sometimes separated by a few km s-1. The VC10s are, on average, slightly more positive than the VC21s. The values of the VCs in the two transitions have been compared to justify using both of these transitions to extract binary star orbital parameters. The arithmetic mean VR10 derived from 635 observations of 47 sources is 6.4 km s-1 with a standard deviation of 3.4 km s-1 while the mean VR21 derived from 485 observations of 41 sources is 4.2 km s-1 with a standard deviation of 2.8 km s-1. The number of occurrences of VR10 and VR21versus velocity range have different distributions. The differences in the VRs indicate that the J21 and J10 emissions arise from dynamically different regions of the circumstellar environment.

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