Radio Astronomy 813 - 1st semester, 2nd term, 2013

This is the home page of Radio Astronomy 813, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Univ. Stellenbosch, South Africa. This course is being led by Prof D B Davidson this year. Evaluation will be discussed in class.

Lecture days and times:

Lectures are given weekly where possible during the second term, on Tuesday from 10h30 to approx 12h30 (length varies from week to week). Venue: usually E207, E&E Engineering, University of Stellenbosch.

What's new:

Site first posted 23 April

Aim

The aim of this post-graduate course is to introduce concepts in radio astronomy to electronic engineers, in particular for students pursuing MSc and PhD research on the MeerKAT and SKA telescopes. The course will introduce some basic concepts in astronomy, more specifically radio astronomy, and also electromagnetic wave theory, before moving on the considering radio telescopes (both single dishes and interferometers). The focus is primarily on engineering electromagnetics, and secondarily on signal processing. The course will not go into detail on the astrophysics of radio emissions, but topics such as including hydrogen line (H1) emissions, synchrotron radiation (bremmstrahlung), cosmic microwave background radiation, and some very basic ideas of cosmology will be touched on.

It is intended that the material will sensitise primarily EE students to the field of radio astronomy, permitting them to interact intelligently with astronomers - in particular regarding design work on the new generation of radio telescopes such as MeerKAT and SKA - rather than making them astronomers per se.

Course announcements

None at present

Lecture schedule and course content (provisional)

Lecture 1 (16 April):: Basic astronomy (various sources) Lecture notes (ppt)
Lecture 2 (23 April): Radio astronomy fundamentals (selected material from Kraus Chapter 3) Lecture notes (handwritten)
Lecture 3 (30 April): Electromagnetic wave polarization fundamentals (selected material from Kraus Chapter 4) Lecture notes (handwritten)
Lecture 4 (7 May): Electromagnetic wave propagation fundamentals (selected material from Kraus Chapter 5) Lecture notes (handwritten)
Lecture 5 (14 May): Fundamentals of antennas, antenna arrays and interferometers (selected material from Kraus Chapter 6, Sections 6.1-6.6). Lecture notes (handwritten) - part I and part II.
Lecture 6 (21 May): The van Cernick Zittert theorem, interferometry and source synthesis (Thompson et al Chapter 14, Clark, "White book"). Lecture notes (handwritten) - revised. SKA post-grad bursary conference 2011 presentation on interferometric arrays. MATLAB files for 1D source synthesis example - main file and function.
Lecture 7 (TBA - Prof Davidson is away 28 May)

References

Lecture 1 was taken from a variety of sources. Recommended additonal reading is Chapter 3 in F.R.Chromey, "The measure the sky: An introduction to observational astronomy", Cambridge Univ Press, 2010.
Lectures 2-5 come from J.D. Kraus, "Radio Astronomy", McGraw Hill 1966 (2nd edn 1986, Cygnus-Quasar).
Lecture 6 comes primarily from A.R. Thompson, J.M Moran, G.W Swenson, "Interferometry and synthesis in radio astronom", 2nd ed, Wiley-VCH, 2004; and BG Clark, "Coherence in Radio Astronomy", in "Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy II", GB Taylor et al. (eds), APS Conference Series, Vol 180, 1999 (aka the "White Book").
See also the NRAO on-line course "Essential Radio Astronomy", availabe http://www.cv.nrao.edu/course/astr534/ERA.shtml