Spurious signals in VSA data

摘要

The Very Small Array (VSA) is an interferometer with very small and closely-packed antennas, designed for studies of the cosmic microwave background radiation. During the commissioning of the VSA, an unwanted signal associated with coupling between the closest antennas was discovered. Here we describe the properties of this signal and the measures taken to eliminate it from the data. The same methods can also be used to eliminate the effects of other unwanted signals in the data, such as contamination from the Sun.