Development of radio telescope for searching for transient stellar objects
Project Description
Transient stellar objects, such as the recently discovered fast radio bursts, are objects in the universe that release a huge amount of energy in a very short time. They cannot be detected easily with conventional optical or radio telescopes unless the telescopes happen to be pointing in the right direction. A new type of radio telescope, coined antenna array, consists of multiple antennas pointing in a fixed direction can watch a wide patch of the sky continuously. As a result, antenna array can detect transient stellar objects relatively easily. Furthermore, using the technique called beamforming, the antenna array can provide information about the direction of the transient stellar object. This project will focus on the design and construction of an antenna array as well as data analysis once the telescope is set up for observation.
Supervisor
LUK, Kam Biu
Quota
3
Course type
UROP1000
UROP1100
UROP2100
UROP3100
UROP3200
UROP4100
Applicant's Roles
Students will participate in simulation for designing the antenna array, construction of the array, and carry out data analysis. It is desirable that the students are familiar with computational techniques, a high-level programming language and a course equivalent to the 3rd or 4th year Electricity and Magnetism.
Applicant's Learning Objectives
Gain experience in literarture search, hardware, electronics, programming, simulation, data analysis, communication skill, problem solving and research.
Complexity of the project
Challenging