Research:Radio Future

From Astronomy Facility Wiki

Long Term Plan

By Jim Davenport, July 2006

It is my hope that this project can help make us better astronomers. The SRT kit is by no means a professional research instrument. That being said, it is equipped to produce modest spectra with useable S/N.

I took up this project as an average undergrad. My GPA was average, I had no research experience, I knew almost none of the astronomy faculty. Being a part of the birth of this instrument has been my 'foot-in-the-door' here, and has earned me much needed research credits, research experience, and perhaps most importantly: relationships with many faculty, grad students, and undergrads. I feel blessed to have been not only a part of it, but to have led it thru it's most fragile of years.

But there is much to improve, a lot of room to grow, and a lot of people to inspire. If you're reading this then you probably know that PRO is the only radio telescope owned by the UW. While this may not be true forever, it certainly gives us status as an irreplaceable tool for now.

Future Priorities

PRO must dedicate itself to being used regularly by our undergraduates. This observatory has always been of the undergrads, by the undergrads, and for the undergrads. Therefore, the first goal of the student(s) in charge must be to seek out new students to become observers. This may be done many ways:

 * Email to all the astro undergrads
 * Flyers in the hallways
 * Speaking to the various undergrad classes (at all levels)
 * Programs like PRE-MAP
 * Help/recommendations from the Faculty

The last item may be, long term, the most effective. Undergrad turnover is so quick that we almost certainly will need help from permanent faculty to keep membership up.

There are many possible projects with PRO (which I will discuss later on). By having students repeat projects (possibly as an introduction to using the observatory) we may keep an eye on the instrument's health over time. In order to gain certainty, the first goal of PRO shall be to conduct reliable and repeatable observations of several bright astronomical sources. These shall serve as standard calibration measurements for posterity.

We may also set the goal to develop 200-300 level curriculum using PRO. Many other universities have purchased the MIT SRT Kit for use in their undergrad classrooms. We have the opportunity now to develop observation and analysis exercises. Having a hands-on role in the classroom will go a long ways to secure further use of the telescope by future Astro-majors.

The longest-term future goal (roughly 2010) should be to build a 2 or 3 dish interferometer. MIT SRT is developing a easy-to-build system for this. As the roof of the Atmospheric Science building is not large enough to produce a satisfactory baseline, it may be more practical to buy several new SRTs (affordable at about $6000.00 each in 2006) and locate them some place off campus. Once a suitable software system has been developed that can control the array from a single machine, remote-desktop type software will easily allow us to communicate remotely. The University has land in eastern Washington (Manastash Ridge Observatory) that has a modest microwave internet downlink to Central Washington University. This site may be capable of support the SRT array if no other is found.

Suggested Projects

This list (hopefully) will be ever-growing as our experience and capabilities grow.

 * Doppler shift/radial velocity measurements of the galactic plane
 * All-Sky drift survey
 * Standard calibration readings from several constant sources
 * Light-curves of radio-variable objects/sources
 * Adding additional frequencies to our system
 * Building an interferometer