LOFAR Science School

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

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