First Year Research Experience (Phys 194): Clocking Dead Stars with Radio Telescopes

• Contact both lecturers: astro-fyre-instruct@uwm.edu
• Prof. David Kaplan
  • Office: KEN 4075
  • Office hours: Tuesday 9am-10am, or by arrangement (please stop by or email)
  • Email: kaplan@uwm.edu
  • Phone: 414-229-4971
    
• Dr. Joe Swiggum
  • Office: KEN 4095
  • Office hours: Thursday 10am-11am, Friday 10am-11am, or by arrangement (please stop by or email)
  • Email: swiggumj@uwm.edu
  • Phone: 414-229-6360
    

• Learn background material on pulsars and radio astronomy
• Learn introductory Unix usage and python programming
• Learn to conduct observations using the Green Bank Telescope, one of the world's premier radio telescopes
• Participate in small groups to adopt and completely "solve" a pulsar, determining all of the relevant physical information and placing it into the context of the larger population
• Work as a class to "solve" a binary pulsar, which has the potential to be significantly more interesting but which is much rarer and requires new concepts and techniques
• Write proposals for new telescope time in small groups, which will be judged by an external panel of collaborators. The best proposals may be awarded time on the Green Bank Telescope

• Problem sets (weekly): 10%; grade will be best 10 of 11 problem sets
  
• Weekly in-class assignments: 50%
• Participation: 20%
• Final proposals and presentations (Friday, Dec 22 12:30pm-2:30pm): 20%.
• You are encouraged to discuss the problem sets with each other but are not allowed to copy each other. 
  
• The final projects will be done in groups of 2.

1. Syllabus (Aug 28, 2017)
2. Lecture Notes (Updated Oct 15, 2017)
3. Intro to radio astronomy and pulsars (Updated September 11, 2017)
4. Observing proposal examples:
   1. GBNCC Timing
   2. Arecibo MSP Searching
   3. GBT Nulling
5. Timing tasks

1. Assignment 1
2. Assignment 2
3. Assignment 3
4. Assignment 4
5. Assignment 5
   1. Jacob's solution to Assignment 5
6. Assignment 6
7. Assignment 7
8. Assignment 8

1. PS1 (Sep 6, 2017; due Sep 13, 2017)
2. PS2 (Sep 13, 2017; due Sep 20, 2017)
3. PS3 (Sep 20, 2017; due Sep 27, 2017)
4. PS4 (Sep 27, 2017; due Oct 4, 2017)
5. PS5 (Oct 4, 2017; due Oct 11, 2017)
• P Pdot data for PS5 (Oct 4, 2017)
6. PS6 (Oct 11, 2017; due Oct 18/25, 2017)

1. CGS Units
2. NASA Astrophysics Data System Astronomy Query
3. ATNF Pulsar Catalog
4. Unix tutorial
5. Unix tutorial 1, Unix tutorial 2
6. Beginner's guide to VIM
7. ADS Library for NANOGrav
8. Wikipedia list of radio telescopes