ASTRO 6525 - Multiwavelength Astronomical Techniques

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Co-meets with ASTRO 4410.

J. Cordes, J. Lloyd.

This course covers telescope design, optics design and instrumentation for wavelengths from optical to radio and their relation to current research needs. Adaptive optics, interferometry, aperture synthesis, and beam forming will be covered. Instrumentation discussions will include CCD and IR/submillimeter detector arrays, heterodyne systems and phased array feeds at radio wavelengths as well as camera designs, cryogenic systems, spectrographs/spectrometers and interferometric correlators. Sensitivity issues, observing techniques, polarimetry and data analysis will be discussed. Course work includes observations with the Hartung-Boothroyd optical telescope on Mount Pleasant and a radio telescope on the roof of the Space Sciences Building. Data from these observations will be processed using modern analysis techniques implemented primarily in Python.