[cgis_hons] Fwd: Radio Astronomy course

From: Victoria Rautenbach <victoria.rautenbach@xxxxxxxxx>
To: GGM Postgrad <upggm_postgrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, GGM Personnel <ggm_personnel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, CGIS Hons <cgis_hons@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:39:48 +0200
FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Asmita Singh <naaginmitha@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 3:29 PM
Subject: Radio Astronomy course
To: Victoria Rautenbach <victoria.rautenbach@xxxxxxxxx>


>>> Roy Booth <rbooth@xxxxxxxxx> 2014/09/26 04:20 PM >>>

*Radio Astronomy*

*A half honours *course to be given by Prof. Roy Booth during
October/November, 2014

Venue: Room 5.31 (top floor) Department of Physics

The Course will start on *Friday, October 17 at 09-00 hrs* and lectures
will be held on the subsequent Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 0900 - 1100
hrs unil November 5.
The course will also include a day-long field trip to the Hartebeesthoek
Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO)

 Provisional outline and syllabus

 The course will consist of a series of 8 or 9 x 2hr sessions, i*ncluding a
day-long visit to HartRAO* with a discussion of the telescope, its
receivers and the astronomical programme which includes observations of
Pulsars, Quasars and Cosmic molecules, both with the 26m antenna as a
single dish and as part of the international networks for*very long
baseline interferometry, VLBI.*

 Each lecture* s*ession will include a lecture (perhaps divided into two
parts) and some discussion, even presentations by the participating
students.

  Course outline

 Session 1: *An overview of the role of radio observations in astronomy*

Astronomy across the spectrum: the history and special role of radio from
early measurements at long wavelengths through measurements across the
radio spectrum (down to sub-millimetre wavelengths) with high
frequency-resolution (spectrometers) and high spatial-resolution
(interferometers).

 Session 2: *Radio telescopes and their receivers*

Radio antennae from the dipole through the single steerable parabolic dish
antenna, their beam patterns; the Cassegrain and offset antenna, beam
shaping - surface accuracy and efficiency; telescopes for millimeter
wavelengths to interferometers and antenna arrays; their effective
collecting area and resolution: signal detection in the presence of noise,
the radiometer equation, and defining system performance. Polarization.

 Session 3: *Radio telescope arrays from KAT-7 to Very Long Baseline
interferometers*

Interferometer arrays. Aperture synthesis – combining many telescopes to
form a high resolution instrument (interferometer). Very Long Baseline
Interfero-metry (VLBI).

 Session 4: *Galactic Astronomy*

Stars, dust and gas. The Milky Way galaxy; measurements of its continuum
and line radiation. Thermal and especially synchrotron radiation, its
polarization and the Galactic magnetic field. Measurement of the Galactic
magnetic field by observations of the Zeeman splitting of the 21cm hydrogen
spectral line.

 Session 5: *Cosmic Masers*

Microwave emission from some interstellar molecules is amplified coherently
giving rise to intense, narrow spectral lines – this is Microwave
amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation, or amplification by
*maser* action. Stimulated emission arises because of population inversion
in one or more energy levels of a molecule. In radio astronomy such
conditions and therefore stimulated emission arise for spectral lines of
hydroxyl (OH), water, silicon monoxide, methyl alcohol. In each case the
resulting masers are important diagnostics of the interstellar medium in
our galaxy and in external galaxies, enabling astronomers to show that the
mass of some extragalactic nuclei exceed 10^6 solar masses.

 Session 6: *Pulsating Radio Sources (Pulsars)*

In 1934, two astrophysicists, Baade and Zwicky suggested that the final
stage of evolution of a massive star would be in a catastrophic collapse,
leading to a supernova explosion, and leaving a very condensed remnant, a
neutron star. Pulsars were discovered by accident by Dame Jocelyn Bell when
she was a research student. Among the first ideas as to their origin, there
was speculation that they were manifestations of interstellar
communications signals but when sense prevailed, it was realised that they
are rapidly rotating neutron stars!

We will discuss this discovery and the exciting physical properties of
these ultra-dense objects and their potential to reveal gravitational
radiation.

 *Session 7: Radio Galaxies and Quasars*

The structure and radio properties of extra galactic radio sources and
quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources) requires high resolution
measurements. Examples of the variety of radio source structures and
possible evolutionary schemes will be discussed.

 *Session 8: The new instruments – ALMA and the SKA*

High sensitivity and dynamic range, as well as several octaves of frequency
coverage are essential to unravel the complexities of the radio emission
from most of the radio sources discussed. In order to achieve the required
sensitivity, two new radio telescopes are under construction:

1. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array is reaching completion on the
high (>5km) mountain, Cerro Chajnantor, in the Chilean Andes, where the
dry, rarified atmosphere gives low attenuation to mm/submm waves, and

2. SKA, the Square Kilometre Array, being built in Africa with its core in
the South African Karoo is still in its infancy, but shows enormous
potential. Both these instruments are data intensive, require massive, high
performance computer support and will produce exabytes (10^18 bytes) of
data for analysis.
[cgis_hons] Fwd: Radio Astronomy course

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