Geoscience Activities at the Onsala Space Observatory

Paper i proceeding, 2024

The Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) operates multiple geodetic and geophysical instruments, including Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) radio telescopes, a superconducting gravimeter, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations, tide gauges, water vapor radiometers (WVRs), a seismometer station, an aeronomy station, a time and frequency laboratory, and corner-cube reflectors for Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). Here, we report the updates of activities for the OSO geodetic facilities in 2022/2023. On the networking backbone, we added new dedicated 100 Gbps fibre lines between the on-site buildings in 2022, which allows the Onsala Twin Telescopes (OTT) to record at a sustained rate of 32 Gbps each. The necessary hardware for 100 Gbps connectivity to the outside world was installed in May 2024. Further highlights are the installation of a new ground-based microwave radiometer in May 2023 and the invar measurement systems on the OTT in December 2023. The new radiometer observes the sky brightness temperatures in 14 different frequency bands (between 22 to 31 GHz and 51 and 58 GHz).