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AST 410: Radio Astronomy

A 3-credit course offered as part of the Minor in Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A), and also available as an elective for students pursuing a major in Physics.

This course is part of two tracks within the Minor in A&A: the Data-Intensive Astronomy (DIA) track and the Space and Planetary Science (SPS) track. The necessary mathematics and physics are introduced from the ground up, ensuring accessibility for students from diverse backgrounds, including physical and life sciences, electrical engineering, and computer science.

Prerequisite: None.

Course Content

Brief History

How did electrical engineering contribute to the rise of radio astronomy? How radio astronomy complements space science and exploration and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

Radio antennas

Dipole antennas and reflectors, beam patterns, antenna surface, antenna feeds.

Interferometry

Two-element interferometer, fringe function, visibility function, primary beam and synthesized beam, aperture synthesis, uv coverage, visibility gridding.

Receiver and correlator

Low-noise amplifiers, heterodyne receivers, transmission lines, spectrometers, polarimeters.

Space communication

Radio comunication, satellites.

Radio Imaging

Methods to produce images from raw observations of a radio telescope.

Keystone Project

Building a small radio telescope and/or imaging of the sky from the visibilities of such a telescope.

Textbooks

  1. Marr, Snell & Kurtz, Fundamentals of Radio Astronomy: Observational Methods, CRC Press, 2016.
  2. Snell, Kurtz & Marr, Fundamentals of Radio Astronomy: Astrophysics, CRC Press, 2019.
  3. Burke, Graham-Smith & Wilkinson, An Introduction to Radio Astronomy, Cambridge University Press,
    2019.
  4. Condon & Ransom, Essential Radio Astronomy, Princeton University Press, 2016.
  5. Wilson, Rohlfs & Huettemeister, Tools of Radio Astronomy, Springer, 2013.
  6. Thompson, Moran & Swenson Jr., Interferometry and Synthesis in Radio Astronomy, Springer Open,
    2017.
AST 403: Galaxies and Intergalactic MediumPHY 230: Mathematics for Physics