Selective Dynamical Imaging of Interferometric Data
Joseph Farah, Peter Galison, Kazunori Akiyama, Katherine L. Bouman, Geoffrey C. Bower, Andrew Chael, Antonio Fuentes, José L. Gómez, Mareki Honma, Michael D. Johnson, Yutaro Kofuji, Daniel P. Marrone, Kotaro Moriyama, Ramesh Narayan, Dominic W. Pesce, Paul Tiede, Maciek Wielgus, Guang-Yao Zhao, A. Alberdi, W. Alef, Juan Carlos Algaba, Richard Anantua, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, Mislav Baloković, John Barrett, B. A. Benson, Dan Bintley, Lindy Blackburn, R. Blundell, W. Boland, Hope Boyce, Michael Bremer, Christiaan D. Brinkerink, Roger Brissenden, S. Britzen, Avery E. Broderick, Dominique Broguière, Thomas Bronzwaer, Sandra Bustamente, Do‐Young Byun, J. E. Carlstrom, Chi‐kwan Chan, Koushik Chatterjee, Shami Chatterjee, Ming‐Tang Chen, Xiaopeng Cheng, Ilje Cho, Pierre Christian, J. E. Conway, J. M. Cordes, T. M. Crawford, G. Crew, Alejandro Cruz-Osorio, Yuzhu Cui, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, G. Desvignes, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Ralph P. Eatough, H. Falcke, Vincent L. Fish, Ed Fomalont, H. Alyson Ford, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, Per Friberg, Christian M. Fromm, Charles F. Gammie, Roberto Garc’a, Olivier Gentaz, C. Goddi, Roman Gold, Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz, Minfeng Gu, Mark Gurwell, Kazuhiro Hada, Daryl Haggard, M. H. Hecht, Ronald Hesper, Luis C. Ho, Paul T. P. Ho, Chih-Wei L. Huang, Lei Huang, D. H. Hughes, Shiro Ikeda, Makoto Inoue, Sara Issaoun, D. J. James, Buell T. Jannuzi, Michaël Janssen, Britton Jeter, Wu Jiang, Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales, Svetlana G. Jorstad, Taehyun Jung, Mansour Karami
Abstract
Abstract Recent developments in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) have made it possible for the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to resolve the innermost accretion flows of the largest supermassive black holes on the sky. The sparse nature of the EHT’s ( u , v )-coverage presents a challenge when attempting to resolve highly time-variable sources. We demonstrate that the changing ( u , v )-coverage of the EHT can contain regions of time over the course of a single observation that facilitate dynamical imaging. These optimal time regions typically have projected baseline distributions that are approximately angularly isotropic and radially homogeneous. We derive a metric of coverage quality based on baseline isotropy and density that is capable of ranking array configurations by their ability to produce accurate dynamical reconstructions. We compare this metric to existing metrics in the literature and investigate their utility by performing dynamical reconstructions on synthetic data from simulated EHT observations of sources with simple orbital variability. We then use these results to make recommendations for imaging the 2017 EHT Sgr A* data set.