It was close to real-time observing. If true, then knowledge of what constitutes a comet may yield clues as to the origins of the solar system. As important as radio data are to understanding comets, they are difficult to collect. Astronomers using radio telescopes usually wait days, sometimes weeks, as the billions of bits of data collected by the telescopes are converted into images. This delay is not an obstacle in studying stellar and interstellar phenomena that are so distant that their movement is imperceptible.
Comets change at short intervals.
The tool that made quick feedback possible for the BIMA team is a new near real-time data processing system developed for modern radio telescopes such as BIMA by NCSA's Radio Astronomy Imaging group led by NCSA astronomer Richard Crutcher, with funds from the National Science Foundation. The system had been under development for a year, and its two key pieces used independently. The comet offered an ideal opportunity for demonstrating the combined power of the technology. One of the tools transports raw data from the telescope to an archive at NCSA within seconds after it is generated. A second tool rapidly processes the data on high-speed, multiprocessor computers, such as NCSA's SGI Origin2000 and Onyx, to create image cubes.