Next Generation Radio Telescope Calibration

下一代射电望远镜校准

• 批准号: 2205471
• 负责人: Miguel Morales
• 金额: $ 50.95万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2205471&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Next; Generation; Radio; Telescope; Calibration

When planning to obtain radio images of the first stars and galaxies in the universe it is crucial that telescope being used is in crisp focus. This can be a timely process, as recently demonstrated by the four months needed for alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors. The alignment of the hundreds of antennas in a modern radio telescope is even more challenging than the alignment of the eighteen segments that compose the James Webb Space Telescope primary mirror. The color-dependent alignment process is called calibration in radio astronomy, and this project will develop, and freely share, a new precision alignment process. The team at the University of Washington specializes in such precision calibration work and has developed the mathematics and statistics needed for a new much improved calibration algorithm. During this project the effectiveness of this new approach will be tested by making radio observations of the first stars. This project will engage community-college transfer students to participate in this research. Precision calibration of interferometric radio data has been greatly advanced by the requirements of 21 cm Cosmology observations. A fundamentally new Bayesian calibration approach referred to as unified calibration allows the uncertainties to be quantified and generates associated optimal calibrations. This advance has the potential to greatly enhance both standard radio calibration and 21 cm Cosmology observations. This project looks to produce two forms of unified calibration. One will be written in python and leverage the community around pyuvdata to produce a flexible and robust implementation. This implementation will enable the community to explore the best calibration parametrizations and to apply the approaches to a wide variety of interferometric data. The second implementation will focus on precision and speed for Epoch of Reionization power spectrum analysis and enable deep data-driven explorations of calibration that will inform the most effective parametrizations of instrument and sky models and their associated uncertainties. The project will also improve the retention rate of community college transfer students at universities through their better engagement in research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

当计划获取宇宙中第一批恒星和星系的射电图像时，所使用的望远镜的焦距清晰至关重要，这可能是一个及时的过程，最近詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜的校准所需的四个月就证明了这一点。现代射电望远镜中数百个天线的对准比詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜主镜的十八个部分的对准更具挑战性。与颜色相关的对准过程在射电天文学中称为校准。项目华盛顿大学的团队专门从事此类精密校准工作，并在该项目中开发了一种经过大幅改进的新校准算法所需的数学和统计数据，以验证该新校准算法的有效性。该方法将通过对第一批恒星进行射电观测来进行测试，该项目将让社区大学转学生参与这项研究，从而满足了 21 厘米宇宙学观测的要求。贝叶斯校准方法称为因为统一校准可以量化不确定性并生成相关的最佳校准，这一进步有可能大大增强标准无线电校准和 21 厘米宇宙学观测，其中一种将用 python 编写。并利用 pyuvdata 社区来制定灵活而强大的实施方案，该实施方案将使社区能够探索最佳的校准参数化并将这些方法应用于各种干涉测量数据。和速度的再电离功率谱分析，并实现深度数据驱动的校准探索，这将为仪器和天空模型及其相关不确定性的最有效参数化提供信息，该项目还将提高社区学院转学生在大学的保留率。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。