Solar radio astronomy is about to undergo a revolution with the advent of a new radio synthesis array, the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR). The array will consist of more than 100 antennas (5000 baselines), and will be designed to meet the special challenges of solar imaging. It will produce high-quality images at hundreds of frequencies in the range 20 MHz-24 GHz. We briefly describe the plans for the instrument, and then concentrate on the range of science that is expected to be addressed, using current state-of-the-art solar radio observations and modeling to illustrate FASR performance. We end with an assessment of the current status of the instrument, and plans for future.

Quiescent solar radiation, at microwave spectral regime, is dominated by gyroresonant and thermal Bremsstrahlung radiations from hot electrons residing in solar active region corona. These radiations are known to provide excellent diagnostics on the coronal temperature, density, and magnetic field, provided that spatially resolved spectra are available from observations. In this paper we present an imaging spectroscopy implemented for a bipolar active region, AR 7912, using the multifrequency interferometric data from the Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA), as processed with a new imaging technique, so-called Spatio-Spectral Maximum Entropy Method (SSMEM). From the microwave maps at 26 frequencies in the range of 1.2-12.4 GHz at both right- and left-circular polarizations, we construct spatially resolved brightness spectra in every reconstructed pixel of about 2 arcsec interval. These spectra allowed us to determine 2-D distribution of electron temperature, magnetic field of coronal base, and emission measure at the coronal base above the active region. We briefly compare the present result with existing studies of the coronal active regions.