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Astronomy 218: 
Radio Astronomy
James M. Moran
Astronomy 218:  Radio Astronomy
Syllabus Fall 2007Syllabus

Meetings:

Tuesday and Thursday 2:00 – 3:30

 

Location: A-101

 

 

 

 

Instructor:

James Moran

 

 

160 Concord Ave., Room M-336 – across Concord Ave. from Observatory,
next to St. Peter’s Church, MS-42

 

 

Office phone: 617-495-7477

 

 

Fax: 617-496-7736

 

 

Email: moran@cfa.harvard.edu

 

 

Office hours: By appointment or drop in

 

 

 

 

Teaching Fellow:

Meredith Hughes
Email: mhughes@cfa.harvard.edu
Office hours: To be determined

Websites:

Course: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/astro218/

 

 

Instructor: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jmoran/

 

 

 

 

Grade:

Homework 40%

 

 

Quiz 30%

 

 

Term Project 30%

 

Homework:

Approximately weekly

 

 

 

 

Quiz:

The quiz is based mainly on the instrumentation part of the course.

 

 

 

 

Primary Reference:

Tools of Radio Astronomy (Rohlfs and Wilson), 4th edition, 2004 (RW) $63.13 on Amazon.com

 

 

 

 
 

Interferometry and Synthesis in Radio Astronomy (Thompson, Moran, and Swenson), 2nd edition, 2001 (TMS) $90.54 (new) on Amazon.com


   Other Useful Text

1. Radio Astronomy (Kraus), 2nd edition, 1986
2. Radio Telescopes (Christiansen and Hogbom), 2nd edition, 1985
3. Instrumentation and Techniques in Radio Astronomy (ed. Goldsmith) (a collection of key papers)
4. Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy, ASP Conference Series, vol. 6 (eds. Perley, Schwab, and Bridle)
5. VLBI and the VLBA, ASP Conference Series, vol. 82, (eds. Zensus, Diamond, and Napier)
6. Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy II, ASP Conference Series, 180, 1999
7. Radiative Processes in Astrophysics (Rybicki and Lightman), 1979
8. The Fourier Transform and its Applications (Bracewell), 3rd edition, 2000
9. Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy (Verschuur and Kellermann), 2nd edition, 1991
10. An Introduction to Radio Astronomy (Burke and Graham-Smith), 2nd edition, 2002

Historical Perspective

1. Evolution of Radio Astronomy (Hey), 1973
2. Classics in Radio Astronomy (ed. Sullivan), 1982 (a collection of key papers)
3. The Development of High Resolution Imaging in Radio Astronomy (Kellermann and Moran), ARAA,
        39, 457-509, 2001
4. The Early Years of Radio Astronomy (ed. Sullivan), 1984 (a collection of key papers)
5. Radar Days (Bowen), 1998
 

Field Trips and Laboratories:

Remote operation of the SMA from 160 Concord Ave., Rm 342, SMA Receiver Lab, Rm 110.

Haystack Observatory 37-m radio telescope in Westford, MA operates at wavelengths of 3 to 20 mm. It will be scheduled for "hands-on" use by the class. Haystack also operates three Small Radio Telescopes (SRT), which have six foot parabolic antennas, satellite TV receivers, and PC control and data processing. A low frequency array operating at 327 MHz has recently been used to detect Deuterium (Rogers et al., 2007, Astronomical Journal, 133, 1625.)

 

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Last modified on September 18, 2007