Radio Astronomy: Tools and Techniques

This is course is aimed at graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and interested third parties who:

• would like to understand radio astronomy better
• would like to develop technical skills (programming, signal processing, instrumentation, algorithms, pedagogy, etc) to help them in their research
• would like to be involved, and involve their peers, in developing concrete tools to help their research

This class will follow a flexible, non-traditional format whereby each week, a group of students and I will work together to prepare public-domain pedagogical materials on a subject that will be distributed to the rest of the class in advance of each meeting. Class time will be split between discussing the subject informally, and working in groups to develop tools and address on-going research questions that each student brings to the class.

My hope is that this class will be moderately time-consuming, but that the tools, collaborations, and research developed inside the class will have a broad enough scope that it can double-count as research/work time. All of our activities are aimed at creating tools (both pedagogical and research-oriented) that will have value beyond the classroom.

Topics

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of topics that we will consider covering in this class. Eventually, it would be nice to link in as many topics as possible and begin to organize subjects by their prerequisites and relatedness.

Computing

• Python Installation and Basic Programming
• Revision Control
• Programming Models
• Processor Architectures
• Data Representations
• Network Programming

Signal Processing

• Convolution Theorem
• Windowing
• Correlators
• Deconvolution

Interferometers

• Basic Interferometry
• Units
• Advanced Interferometry
• Interferometric Imaging

Noise

• Central Limit Theorem
• Radiometer Equation
• Bayesian Statistics

Electronics

• Transmission Lines
• Antennas and Feeds

Pedagogy / Meta

• Creating Short Topical Presentations
• Using AstroBaki

Topics by Date

• Aug 31:
  • Convolution Theorem
  • Creating Short Topical Presentations
  • Python Installation and Basic Programming
  • Brainstorming Lab Projects
  • Choosing a Topic to Present
• Sep 07:
• Sep 14:
• Sep 21:
• Sep 28:
• Oct 05:
• Oct 12:
• Oct 19:
• Oct 26:
• Nov 02:
• Nov 09:
• Nov 16:
• Nov 23:
• Dec 03: