Polarization Calibration of Radio Interferometric Data - Kevin O'Brien

The MOJAVE project is obtaining high resolution images of over 100 of the brightest
radio sources in the sky that are associated with jets emerging from the vicinity of
supermassive black holes. The observations are made monthly with the Very Long Baseline Array
of radio telescopes, and are sensitive to both linear and circular polarization. Absolute calibration of the polarized data is difficult due to a lack of standard
sources in the sky that have stable polarization properties. This project involves using the
stability of the antenna electronics over time, as well as independent data from the
University of Michigan 26 m radio telescope to determine the required polarization calibration
for the MOJAVE observations.