Variables and Slow Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array

Murchison 宽场阵列的变量和慢瞬变

• 批准号: 1412421
• 负责人: David Kaplan
• 金额: $ 23.21万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1412421&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Variables; Slow; Transients; Murchison; Widefield

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a major new international observatory to study the low-frequency radio sky. Kaplan and Croft will develop new capabilities to observe and identify transient and variable radio sources. This will provide insight about explosive and flaring sources, from nearby stars to distant galaxies. These techniques will be necessary to maximize the scientific return from the next generation of radio telescopes. Kaplan and Croft will also introduce undergraduate students to the excitement of this growing field, both through focused, in-depth research projects with individual students, and through regular discussions with a larger group of students covering research methods, advances in the field, and large-scale participatory projects. They will continue working to increase representation of underrepresented minorities through public talks, school visits, workshops, star parties, and web materials, exploring creative ways to attract them to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers through campus-based activities and researcher visits to local schools.The Co-PIs are members of the MWA transient collaboration. They will develop tools to recover transients from deep, low-frequency radio images out of the galactic plane obtained for Epoch of Reionization (EoR) studies. They will also conduct pointed observations in the galactic plane to search for transient and variable radio counterparts to X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, stellar coronal sources, and previously unknown sources. Radio light curves will be released to the astronomical community. Characterizing variable sources in the background is also an important step towards extracting the redshifted 21 cm emission from the EoR images, a key project of MWA.

默奇森宽场阵列 (MWA) 是研究低频射电天空的一个重要的新型国际天文台。卡普兰和克罗夫特将开发新的能力来观察和识别瞬态和可变的无线电源。 这将提供有关爆炸源和耀斑源的见解，从附近的恒星到遥远的星系。这些技术对于最大限度地提高下一代射电望远镜的科学回报是必要的。卡普兰和克罗夫特还将通过与个别学生进行有针对性的深入研究项目，以及通过与更多学生进行定期讨论，涵盖研究方法、该领域的进展和大规模研究，向本科生介绍这个不断发展的领域的令人兴奋的地方。规模参与性项目。他们将继续努力通过公开演讲、学校参观、研讨会、明星派对和网络材料来增加代表性不足的少数群体的代表性，并通过校园活动和研究人员访问探索创造性的方式来吸引他们从事科学、技术、工程和数学职业到当地学校。Co-PI 是 MWA 临时合作的成员。 他们将开发工具来从银河平面外的深层低频射电图像中恢复瞬态，这些图像是为再电离时代（EoR）研究而获得的。 他们还将在银河平面上进行定向观测，以寻找 X 射线双星、活动星系核、恒星日冕源和以前未知的源的瞬态和可变射电对应物。 射电光变曲线将发布给天文学界。 表征背景中的可变源也是从 EoR 图像中提取红移 21 cm 发射的重要一步，这是 MWA 的一个关键项目。