2008: MUCH OF THE SCHOOL MATERIAL IS NOW VERY OUT-OF-DATE but for what it is worth here is a tar file of all the material (169 MB). Download and extract with
tar -zxvf SpringSchool.tgz
Update 13 April 2000. The school is now full. Many thanks to all applicants. If you have not already let us know your travel arrangements, any extra nights or dietary reuirements, please do so immediately. The agenda has been slightly revised and some additional travel information has been added.
Radio interferometers form part of the new generation of high resolution, high sensitivity instruments. MERLIN and EVN observations which compliment the HST, XMM and other deep fields are revealing hitherto unseen populations of sources. The star formation history of the Universe, the details of protostellar and protoplanetary discs, the processes in an AGN or an X-Ray binary are just some of the outstanding questions in astronomy which radio observations help to answer.
Present instruments have milli-arcsec or even micro-arcsec resolution and spectral lines can be observed with a fractional resolution of one part in 10^6 or 10^7. Demands for observing time are becoming ever more competitive and new techniques are being developed for analysing the increasing volumes of data. Within the next decade, major upgrades and new instruments will become available.
This School is designed to help UK and other astronomers make the best use of radio interferometers, now and in the future.
Topics to be covered include:
These sessions will cover the use of data reduction packages such as AIPS, AIPS++, DIFMAP. There will be a mixture of lectures, demonstrations and hands-on experience and we will provide data and workprograms for you to tackle at your own pace with tutors present.
Fuller details of the agenda are given here. Here is a list of School participants - please notify me of errors/omissions
There is no fee; accomodation and meals will be provided during the
School. If you need to stay additional nights please let us
know. Vegetarian options will be available at all meals, please
contact us if you want this or have any other requirements.
Some information about travel to/from JBO is
given here, and links for information about rail and coach
transport. Accomodation will be at Hulme Hall ( map) and
free coaches will take you between JBO and Manchester each day.
If you are arriving on 24 April or earlier, or leaving
on Saturday 29 April or later, and have arranged to stay extra nights
in Manchester, here are directions for getting to Hulme Hall.
Some
people from EC institutes outside The Netherlands may be eligible for
help with travel costs. You should have been informed about this in
detail but if you have any queries please
contact us at once.
Jodrell Bank Observatory is part of the University of Manchester .
If you would like to get more information about the
general Manchester area and its sights you might
want to try the following webpages:
A1 Tourism Hotel and Guest House Directory - Greater Manchester Area
The Manchester 24 hour city
Cheshire, the area where Jodrell Bank is situated.
How to start AIPS
This link describes
starting AIPS on the JBO system, and outlines some basic file management tasks.
The Virtual Radio Interferometer simulates how a radio interferometer works. You need to have Java enabled in your browser.
Here is an overview of simple data processing.
The computing sessions use demonstration runfiles in AIPS. The runfiles and data needed are outlined here.
FLOWCHARTS for DEMO runfiles, including PLOT listings:
BASIC runs through the
minimum steps, for start to finish, to make a MERLIN continuum phase
referenced map.
GENCAL and its PLOTS show how to
calibrate the phase, amplitude and polarisation using calibrator
sources.
SELFCAL shows how
to self-calibrate a continuum target source.
IMAGE produces plots
which illustrate mapping
and cleaning in more detail than during a normal mapping process.
LINE1a and LINE1b go through a MERLIN OH maser spectral line calibration and mapping procedure.
VLBDEMO shows how to process VLBI continuum data.
PLOTS from these DEMOS
BASIC
BPL.0
BPL.1
BPL.2
BPL.3
BPL.4
BPL.5
BPL.6
GENCAL
GPL.0
GPL.1
GPL.2
GPL.3
GPL.4
GPL.5
GPL.6
GPL.7
GPL.8
GPL.9
GPL.10
GPL.11
GPL.12
GPL.13
GPL.14
GPL.15
GPL.16
GPL.17
GPL.18
GPL.19
GPL.20
GPL.21
SELFCAL
SPL.0
SPL.1
SPL.2
SPL.3
SPL.4
SPL.5
SPL.6
SPL.7
SPL.8
SPL.9
IMAGE
IPL.0
IPL.1
IPL.2
IPL.3
IPL.4
IPL.5
IPL.6
IPL.7
IPL.8
IPL.9
IPL.10
IPL.11
IPL.12
IPL.13
IPL.14
IPL.15
LINE
LPL.0
LPL.1
LPL.2
LPL.3
LPL.4
LPL.5
LPL.6
LPL.7
LPL.8
LPL.9
LPL.10
LPL.11
LPL.12
LPL.13
LPL.14
LPL.15
LPL.16
LPL.17
LPL.18
LPL.19
LPL.20
LPL.21
Here is a colour map of the target 3C277.1. For more about the original experiment see Ludke et al. 1998 MNRAS 299, 467.
Here are the MERLIN continuum DEMO RUNFILES
BASIC.EHEX
GENCAL.EHEX
SELFCAL.EHEX
IMAGE.EHEX
Here is the MERLIN line DEMO RUNFILE
LINE1.EHEX
Here is the VLBI DEMO RUNFILE
VLBDEMO.EHEX
NB for the School these are already in /home/school/SCRIPTS
You can get the MERLIN uv data by anonymous ftp:
First email amsr@jb.man.ac.uk fo get the data loaded and then get instructions.
NB for the School the data is already loaded as described in runfiles and data
RUNFILES
as described in runfiles and data
3C277.1RUN.tar.Z (also
needs 95apr18.d:2.FITS from ftp)
CONTINUUMRUN.tar.Z
LINERUN.tar.Z
(also needs 93dec10.d:2.FITS_60 93dec10.d:2.FITS_65 93dec10.d:2.FITS_67)
NB for the School these are already in /home/school/SCRIPTS
and the data is in /home/school/DATA
Thank-you. You can contact us as below.
Spring School,
MERLIN/VLBI National Facility,
University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Observatory
Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 9DL, U.K.
Anita Richards, Tom Muxlow
amsr@jb.man.ac.uk
twbm@jb.man.ac.uk
tel 01477 571321 fax 01477 571618