Speaker
Description
We present an analysis of 55 hours of drift-scan data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a precursor to the SKA. The observation spans right ascensions from $\alpha = 349.0^{\circ}$ to $70^{\circ}$, covering two well-studied MWA fields, EoR0 and EoR1, divided into 163 Pointing Centres (PCs), each corresponding to approximately 20 minutes of observation time. For each PC, we estimate both the angular power spectrum ($D_{\ell}$) and the power spectrum $P(k_{\perp}; k_{\parallel})$. Due to the periodic missing channels in MWA data and the strong spectral dependence of foregrounds, the power spectra exhibit horizontal stripes in the $(k_{\perp}; k_{\parallel})$ plane. Following Elahi et al. (2025), we apply the Smooth Component Filtering (SCF) technique to mitigate this effect. Our analysis reveals a gradual increase in power from $\alpha = 37.0^{\circ}$ to $70^{\circ}$, attributed to Fornax A entering the main lobe of the primary beam. After examining the $(k_{\perp}; k_{\parallel})$ space, we implement a masking procedure prior to computing $\Delta^{2}(k)$ for all PCs. I will present the upper limits of the 21cm signal for each pointing separately, as well as the incoherently combined analysis, which aims to achieve improved sensitivity. This sky region overlaps with EoR0, EoR1, and the HERA stripe, and identifying relatively uncontaminated regions will aid future SKA-EoR observations.
