Today's Colloquium: The Radio Time Domain with the Murchison Widefield Array and Beyond

© David Kaplan

Explorations of the radio sky in the time-domain are an exciting frontier in astrophysics, and one where new observational capabilities will open up new windows on the universe. As one of a new generation of widefield, low-frequency radio telescopes, the Murchison Widefield Array has enormous potential to conduct blind searches for radio transients. We are working to develop capabilities for the MWA that will continue to serve the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Variables and Slow Transients (VAST), eventually allowing real-time transient detection and characterization. I will discuss the expected types of sources that we hope to discover with the full array, explore some of our initial results, and highlight plans for the next generation of facilities.