So I'm finally back at Surrey after spending a wonderful 8 months working with radio telescopes. After what I may call an "educational break" it is nice to be back in the classroom. But there is another reason why I am so glad to be back at school again.
My favorite place in all of campus is on top of the Earth and Ocean sciences building, where the UBC astronomy club's 12 inch (diameter) telescope is housed. And this isn't any ordinary 12" scope that you might find on telescope shops these days. How the astronomy club came to own such a unique instrument is a mystery to me. At least I am sure that it was way before my time.
July 10th , 2009 2:30 am:
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! My phone alarm went off and I barely opened my eyes, still asleep. Unable to getup from bed I thought to myself "may be I should try this tmr", but somehow I knew if I didn't get up then I'll regret it later. I removed the curtains from the nearest window and saw several stars (clear sky), and that was enough to get me up from bed. I got my stuff together in the next half hour, hopped in the car and drove to DRAO. Wow! it's the earliest I've ever been to work! I got off the car and saw the Big Dish (26m radio telescope at DRAO) slowly moving along the meridian faithfully carrying out the scans I scheduled last day. Just to the side of the dish in the southern sky I saw the gibbous Moon, and Huh! the object I wanted to see, which would lead me to the object that I really wanted to see.
I thought I'd post a couple of cool satellite photos that I found in the data set I'm working on.
If you look closely at the first one, it looks like a satellite track started at a star. I leave it to the imagination of Star Wars fans as to what it looks like.
Posted by: Lorin Briand in Student life, English on
Jui 19, 2009
Well, after the first couple of weeks, I have my first light curve. Most people think that we astronomers spend much of our time at telescopes. Not really. One run at a telescope can create enough data to keep a scientist busy for a whole year.
Posted by: Lorin Briand in Student life, English on
Mai 8, 2009
Well, here it is: The start of my MSc project. What am I doing? Measuring the periods of High Mass X-Ray Binary stars (HMXBs) in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. (or in short hand: the LMC and SMC.) What does that mean? I take pictures from other observatories in Australia, Chile and other countries and turn it into lists of numbers and graphs. Ok, so what are you REALLY doing? Trying to find out how fast Black Holes and Neutron Stars are zipping around very big stars in neighboring galaxies. Cool, huh?
It's been 4 months since I first started work as a coop student at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton. The past four months have been exiciting, challenging and educational at the same time. The most exciting part of my work was operating the 26m single dish telescope at DRAO to observe the background synchrotron emission, and spectral absorption in polarization of background emission by OH and H1 clouds.
Astronomy has been my hobby and passion even before I started my studies at UBC as a physics and astronomy student. However before I came to DRAO my knowledge about radio astronomy was next to nothing. How does the sky look like in radio wavelengths? Can you see craters in the moon, moons of Jupiter or Rings of saturn in radio? What kind of things do radio astronomers really observe? How does a radio telescope work? Is it as exiting as looking at the stars with my small refractor? These were some of the questions that went through my mind, and for which I seeked answers as a part of my learning experience.
I am a science Coop student from UBC working on the GMIMS project at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) at Penticton, BC. The Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey is an attempt to study the magnetic field of our Galaxy through the polarization of the synchrotron emission over the entire sky, with the participation of 10 institutions all around the world.
Hello, my PhD project uses the technique of Magnetic Doppler Imaging (MDI) (the highest resolution technique in astronomy), to map the surface chemical structures and magnetic field topologies of magnetic chemically peculiar A and B type stars (Ap).
The project exploits the latest generation of spectropolarimeters (NARVAL and ESPaDOnS) to obtain high-resolution time-series of Stokes IQUV spectra of a selection of Ap stars. The NARVAL spectropolarimeter is installed at the Telescope Bernard Lyot at the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees and ESPaDOnS is at the CFHT (Canada France Hawaii Telescope) in Hawaii.
I just got home from an amazing trip to Ireland. I was attending a workshop on high performance computing in astrophysics. I know, it doesn't sound exciting but it was terrific. Definitely a good way to start my Ph.D. I met people from all over Europe and it's amazing to think we all do similar research.
Posted by: Andy Woodsworth in English on
Nov 25, 2008
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