MeerKAT Grand Tour Data Science workshop
Topics that were covered by the workshop include:
● Electronics and receivers using the L-band Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART) recently constructed at Rhodes University. Students were introduced to the front-end instrument electronics and calibration. Both topics are directly applicable to understanding the core concepts in the design of the MeerKAT receiver, digitisation and correlation chain. The TART sessions included a hands-on session with TART visibility data viewed and snapshot-imaged to monitor transitory Global Navigation Satellite constellations.
● Continuum imaging. The workshop discussed a range of continuum science topics for MeerKAT and teaching prospective students the basics of interferometric calibration and imaging. This expanded upon the TART data session with subsets of MeerKAT visibility data. Students were exposed to a wide range of topics, from elementary to advanced, generally required to produce science-analysis-ready MeerKAT images.
● Pulsar searching and timing with MeerKAT. The exciting field of pulsar astronomy was discussed and provided students with the opportunity to search for pulsars in data of a nearby Globular Cluster as captured by the TRAPUM search backends. Having discovered their own pulsar, they were given the opportunity to explore concepts relating to pulsar timing with additional data from the MeerTIME backend. Through the art of pulsar timing, students learned how to obtain accurate system parameters of pulsars in relativistic binaries. They were introduced to commonly-used sodware stacks to search for and analyse pulsar data.
● The Breakthrough Listen project and MeerKAT’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In recent years MeerKAT has joined the worldwide network of instruments searching the skies for signs that we are not alone. The scientific reasoning behind the SETI programme was discussed with the digital signal processing techniques, including Doppler searches, employed to analyse filterbank data taken with the Breakthrough Listen User Supplied Equipment (BLUSE) backend of the MeerKAT telescope.
Please note that a limited number of talks/lectures from the workshop have been made available through the e-learning portal due to the low audio quality of videos. Students interested in the pulsars and timing with MeerKAT are encouraged to review the “MeerKAT Pulsar Timing workshop” on the e-learning portal.
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