Astrobites@Anchorage: Liveblogging from the land of the midnight Sun

Astrobites@Anchorage: Liveblogging from the land of the midnight Sun

by | Jun 10, 2012 | Current Events

Greetings from Anchorage, AK, site of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) 220th Meeting taking place June 10-14, 2012. Just as we did at the AAS meeting in Austin this year, Astrobites will be liveblogging and reporting from Anchorage, suspending our regular posts for the next four days. This is now the fourth consecutive AAS meeting at which we’ve had an official presence; we were also at Seattle (AAS #217), Boston (AAS #218), and Austin (AAS #219).We’ll have lots in store for you over the next four days as we attend press conferences, talks, and poster sessions, so follow us on twitter and keep an eye on your RSS feeds and our website. We’ll follow a similar format to Austin, posting two articles a day (one each for morning and afternoon) that are continuously updated with short summaries and press report announcements. Thanks again to AAS President Debra Elmegreen and AAS Press Officer Rick Fienberg for inviting us once again to attend the press conferences, allowing us to report on the latest astronomy headlines as they happen!If you’re here at the meeting, come see us at the Undergraduate Orientation Sunday night from 6:00-7:00 pm at the Fairbanks Room in the Marriott Downtown. We’re also presenting a poster (with updated statistics!), and would be delighted if you stopped by:Astrobites: The Astro-ph Reader’s Digest for UndergraduatesPoster #437.01Wednesday, June 13, 9:00 AM – 7:30 PM, Exhibit Hall, Dena’ina CenterThe following Astrobites authors are giving scientific presentations at the meeting:Magnetic Domination of Recollimation Boundary Layers in Relativistic JetsPoster #335.18Tuesday, June 12, 9:00 am – 6:30 pm, Exhibit Hall, Dena’ina CenterSusanna Kohler, M. C. BegelmanEclipsing...
Fringes, Phase centers, and Fourier Transforms: The 13th NRAO Synthesis Imaging Workshop, Part I

Fringes, Phase centers, and Fourier Transforms: The 13th NRAO Synthesis Imaging Workshop, Part I

by | Jun 9, 2012 | Personal Experiences

Part I: Let the Synthesis BeginI recently participated in the 13th Synthesis Imaging (a.k.a. Interferometry) Workshop (SIW) hosted by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, NM from May 28 – June 5, 2012. It was incredibly informative, useful, and fun, and I’d like to share some of my experiences – particularly regarding what it’s like to attend your first workshop in astronomy, including both the official events and after hours. This is the first post in the series describing my time at the SIW, covering the introduction and the first two days (May 28-29). IntroductionRadio interferometry – combining signals from multiple antennas to mimic the effective resolution of a single, larger dish – is a complex business. You have to know the exact locations of your antennas, utilize sophisticated electronics to control the phase delays in your signal chain, and understand and minimize noise contributions, not to mention build a boatload of antennas (along with their associated receivers, cryogenic modules, and cables). Oh, and it is also complex in that the raw data obtained, known as “visibilities”, are in fact complex numbers with a real and imaginary part! I’m not going to try to explain the details of interferometry in this article (partially because I’m still learning); for a great visual introduction to the subject, I highly recommend checking out the Virtual Radio Interferometer, a Java applet that explains and demonstrates the effects of changing visibility coverage on interferometric imaging. In addition, many of the lectures from the 13th SIW have been uploaded here in .pdf format if you’d like to follow along as I describe my experiences. And don’t...