The Deep Synoptic Array

The Deep Synoptic Array (DSA, formerly DSA-2000) will be a world-leading radio survey telescope and multi-messenger discovery engine. The array will consist of of 1650 × 6.15m dishes instantaneously covering the 0.7 – 2 GHz frequency range, spanning an area of 19 km × 15 km in a radio-quiet valley in Nevada. It will have near complete sampling of the uv-plane allowing us to replace a traditional correlator digital backend with a “radio camera” that produces images in real-time.  In a five-year initial survey, the DSA will image the entire viewable sky (~31,000 deg²) repeatedly over sixteen epochs, with a spatial resolution of 3.0 arcseconds, detecting >1 billion radio sources in a combined full-Stokes sky map with 500 nJy/beam rms noise. As a radio survey instrument it will be unprecedented relative to any instrument existing or planned.