Monitoring of variable sources, X-ray binaries and AGN, at 15 GHz

The Ryle Telescope was used for some years for monitoring variable sources (in addition to its role in source-surveys related to the Sunyaev-Zeldovitch studies).

The instrument is now transformed into the "AMI large array": see the AMI pages for details.

The basic parameters of the Ryle Telescope are described in Pooley & Fender (1997, MNRAS, 292, 925-933). The AMI Large Array covers a wider radio-frequency bandwidth and has a completely new receiver system. The rebuild took place between 2006 June and mid-2008; between these dates there is no useful data available. In order to make the data available for other observers to assess the current state of the system, some files (in postscript or gzipped postscript format) are available for GRS1915+105, Cygnus X-1, Cygnus X-3, LS I +61°303, J0958+6533, B1428+422 = J1430+4204 and for J1118+480 (on a "best efforts" basis) for consultation.

For some sources there are many plots, organised by date:
filenames including yyyy.ps are for the whole of year yyyy,
those with yymm.ps are for month mm in year yy,
and yymmdd.ps for single days.

Many of these plots also include data from the RXTE All-sky monitor , the SWIFT satellite , and the MAXI monitor on the International Space Station which are gratefully acknowledged.

There is also a table of data on GRB021004, and plots for GRB030329

See the paper (pdf file here) presented at the 6th microquasar workshop for some background and highlights of the monitoring programme. Similar data are now being collected and some are now available on the web site. We collect data over a wider spectral band, and with higher sensitivity and time-resolution, although not all of these are yet available for general use.