Radioastronomical Techniques and Interferometry

The aim of the course is that students are to attain basic understanding of advanced techniques in radioastronomy. This includes both single dish operations and interferometry. The course shall enable the students to plan an astronomical experiment using interferometry, and to determine the required integration time, choice of interferometer (resolution, maximum size of mapable structure, fidelity of image). They should learn to go from raw astronomy interferometry data to a final image.

Furthermore, the course also aims at providing the students with basic knowledge in interferometry for geodesy. The level of understanding should be such that the students in their profession as engineers should be able to actively apply radioastronomical techniques.

The course contains the following parts:

• Single dish radioastronomy
• Fundamental concepts
• Basic antenna theory
• Receiver and signal processing
• Observational methods
• Radioastronomical objects
• Spectral line analysis
• Data handling
• Radio Interferometry for Astronomy and Geodesy
• VLBI correlation
• The 2-element non-tracking interferometer
• The tracking interferometer
• The 2D Fourier transforms
• The aperture plane or 'uv' coverage for example interferometers
• The dirty map and dirty beam
• Deconvolution methods
• Phase errors and their recovery using closure phase and self-calibration
• Comparisons with phased arrays and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
• Geodetic VLBI data analysis