22 – 26 May 2023
Where: Auditorium 3, Floor 1, Laboratory Complex, Sofia Tech Park
Aim: The school aims to provide knowledge about the LOFAR telescope and the various scientific topics that can be pursued with. The main target group is students and postdocs who have not worked with LOFAR before. Lectures, demos and tutorials will be presented by members of the STELLAR project team. Interaction and networking between participants and lecturers will be promoted via Q&A sessions as well as team building activities.
Deadline for Applying: 15 April 2023
Notification of acceptance: 20 April 2023
Language: English
Requirements: laptop, familiarity with Python.
LECTURERS:
Dr. Harish Vedantham, ASTRON, Netherlands
Dr. Pietro Zucca, ASTRON, Netherlands
Dr. Maaijke Mevius, ASTRON, Netherlands
Dr. Peijin Zhang, University of Helsinki and IANAO, BG
Dr. Kamen Kozarev, IANAO, BG
Dr. Rositsa Miteva, IANAO, BG
Jeremy Rigney, DIAS, Ireland
Mohamed Nedal, IANAO, BG
LOC:
Dr. Antoaneta Anonova, IANAO, BG
Dr. Kamen Kozarev, IANAO, BG
Dr. Rositsa Miteva, IANAO, BG
Dr. Momchil Dechev, IANAO, BG
Asen Mutafov, IANAO, BG
TOPICS:
1. Radio astronomy at low frequencies
2.The LOFAR telescope and observing with it
3. LOFAR data inspection and initial reduction
4. Science with LOFAR – from the Epoch of reionisation to the present-day Solar system
5. Hands-on practicals with interferometric and beamformed data.
PROGRAMМЕ:
Monday
8:30 – 9:00 Registration
9:00 – 9:30 Welcome and starting remarks, STELLAR Project (Kamen Kozarev)
9:30 – 10:15 Introduction to radio astronomy (Rositsa Miteva)
10:15 – 11:00 Radio astronomy at low frequencies (Rositsa Miteva)
11:00 – 11:30 COFFEE BREAK
11:30 – 13:00 Introduction to Interferometry (Harish Vedantham)
13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 15:00 (online) 2DFFT and interferometry (Maaijke Mevius)
15:00 – 16:00 APSYNSIM interactive demo (Kamen Kozarev)
16:00 – 16:30 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:30 (online) Removal of instrumental and ionospheric effects from the data (Maaijke Mevius)
Tuesday
9:00 – 9:50 Introduction to LOFAR (Pietro Zucca)
9:50 – 10:30 LOFAR proposals & access (Pietro Zucca)
10:30 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK
11:00 – 11:30 Accessing data from the LTA (Pietro Zucca)
11:30 – 12:30 (online) Raw data quality assessment (Peijin Zhang)
12:30 – 13:00 Practice: access to computer nodes
13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 15:00 Measurement set and accessing data (Harish Vedantham)
15:00 – 16:00 Flagging and calibration (Harish Vedantham)
16:00 – 16:30 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:30 Checking and applying calibration solutions (Harish Vedantham)
Wednesday
9:00 – 9:50 Radio emissions from the Sun (Pietro Zucca)
9:50 – 10:30 Radio emissions from stars and planets (Harish Vedantham)
10:30 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK
11:00 – 11:50 Single station science (Jeremy Rigney)
11:50 – 12:30 Radio transients (FRBs, pulsars) (Jeremy Rigney)
12:30 – 13:00 Q&A
13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 15:00 (online) Imaging – Quality assessment of calibrated data & wsclean (Peijin Zhang)
15:00 – 16:00 Imaging with wsclean
16:00 – 16:30 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:30 Imaging with wsclean
Thursday
9:00 – 10:30 Beamformed data processing 1 (Pietro Zucca & Mohamed Nedal)
10:30 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK
11:00 – 13:00 Beamformed data processing 2 (Pietro Zucca & Mohamed Nedal)
13:00 – 13:30 LUNCH
13:30 – 14:00 Visit to Discoverer Petascale Supercomputer
14:00 – 16:00 Beamformed data processing 3 (Pietro Zucca & Mohamed Nedal)
16:00 – 16:30 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:30 Beamformed data processing – summary (Pietro Zucca & Mohamed Nedal)
Friday
9:00 – 10:30 Practice
10:30 – 11:00 COFFEE BREAK
11:00 – 13:00 Practice
13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 16:00 Practice
16:00 – 16:30 COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:00 Q&A, questionnaire
17:00 – 17:30 Concluding remarks
PARTICIPANTS:
Pavlina Aleksieva
Anton Atanasov
Martin Bakanov
Dushan Bikov
Mohamed Darwish
Alex Georgiev
Anna Görgei
Vladislav Marchev
Samuil Petrov
Jeremy Rigney
Teodora Serafimova
Bozhidara Stoyanova
Ahmed Yassen