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Radio Astronomy Practical 2005/09/01-07


Three groups of students converged on HartRAO on 2005 August 30 to produce the largest group yet carrying out a radio astronomy practical at the observatory.

Eleven students of South Africa's National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme arrived via the Boyden Observatory, comprising Charles Copley, Ewald Zietsman, James Tagg, Pheneas Nkundabakwia, Takalani Mashamba, Oyapo Chimidza, John Bosco Habarulema, Zama Katamzi, Annelie Roux and Patrice Okouma.

They were joined by three Physics Hons students from Rhodes University (Donald Carr, Oliver King and Stephen Robertson), and four students from the Radar Remote Sensing Group of the University of Cape Town (Nebiha Shafi, Monica Wu, Andile Mngadi and Sydney Dunn).

calibration
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Under the guidance of Mike Gaylard, the students are seen here calibrating the microwave receivers on the telescope by injecting a signal of known intensity from a noise diode, under computer control from the control room. The data are projected onto a screen.

Radio galaxy 3C218 was used to calibrated the telescope in five wavlength bands. The students observed some objects with "unknown" radio characteristics - the planets Jupiter and Venus, the prototype quasar 3C273, the well-known Orion Nebula, and the Crab supernova remnant.

sun map
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Sarah Buchner explains how we map the Sun's emission at a wavelength of 2.5 cm.

data reduction
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The students reducing data using spreadsheets on PCs.

flip chart
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Do the teams reducing the data get the same answers? Oliver King adds his numbers to the table.

group
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Its Sunday morning and time for a close look at the telescope.

climbing
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Climbing the telescope.

to the edge
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Rather gingerly moving to the edge of the telescope.

on the edge
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A careful look over the edge of the dish.

group in dish
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The group show that they survived the climb.

hot and cold
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Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble - Justin Jonas demonstrates how to measure the noise temperature of a receiver using hot and cold loads. Here a liquid nitrogen bath provides the cold load.

receiver measurments
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Students measure the receiver temperature while in the background Justin describes the configuration.