SUNDAY 14 OCTOBER, 2018 – UWI TODAY
11
RADIO ASTRONOMY & DATA SCIENCE
Using code to see the stars
What does computer code have to do with the stars?
Quite a lot, actually. As science writer Sarah Scoles has
observed (Learn to Code or Get Left Behind, Wired
magazine, May 26, 2017) , today’s astronomers don't
just need to know how stars form and black holes
burst: “They also need knowledge of how to pry that
information from the many terabytes of data that
will stream from next-generation telescopes... So
they're largely teaching themselves—using a suite of
open-source training tools, focused workshops, and
fellowship programmes to help and actually prepare
astronomers for the universe they’re entering.”
Enter Python.The Python programming language
is a tool for basic research and engineering, and is
becoming one of the most widely used languages
for data analysis. In the field of astronomy, Python
is increasingly used both by institutions developing
software for new instruments, telescopes andmissions,
and by astronomers for use in analyzing their massive
amounts of data.TheMeerKat telescope array in south
Africa, for instance, generates many terabytes of data
in just a single minute.
Here at The UWI, Jason Renwick (a 2018 UWI
graduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
held a workshop last month (September 15) at the
Faculty of Science and Technology on “How to display
radio astronomy images with Python.” Jason, in
addition to being a former 2014 NASA International
Internship Program intern, recently returned from
another training opportunity: the Summer 2018
NINE programme, which he attended from June 2
– July 31, 2018 at Green Bank, West Virginia. There,
Jason developed a web app, created on Rasberry Pi
(a low-cost, credit card-sized Linux computer), to
organize, curate, and process images provided from
data captured by astronomy telescopes.
“The main goal is to find radio images in the
dataset, for instance, images suggesting galaxies. I have
found about 200 (previously discovered) galaxies from
datasets I’ve examined. The Python programming
language helps process all this data,” said Jason in an
interview with UWI Today.
Coming out of this experience, Jason is now a
NINE-certified trainer. NINE stands for the National
and International Non-Traditional Exchange (NINE)
Program with the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is based in five sites
in the USA, including Green Bank, West Virginia,
where Jasonwent.The NRAO is a US Federally Funded
Research andDevelopment Center of the United States
National Science Foundation for the purpose of radio
astronomy. The NRAO designs, builds, and operates
its own high sensitivity radio telescopes for use by
scientists around the world.
Jason explained that our Caribbean location may
be considered a dead zone for radio astronomy because
it is often difficult to collect astronomical data from
telescopes in conditions of high humidity. However,
because of the huge amount of data captured by radio
telescopes elsewhere, the process of helping to crunch
some of this data is an interesting opportunity for
many countries and budding astronomers. The Open
Skies Policy applied to astronomy helps ensure that
researchers in less-advanced countries—which cannot
fund major telescopes or be part of international
From left, Jason Renwick, newly certified NINE trainer, stands with
Brandon Rajkumar, a postgraduate student in Astronomy. Rajkumar
proudly shows off his VLASS certification issued by the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory.
Tuning into
radio astronomy
Continued from
page 10
The feedback from the participants of the
workshop was highly inspiring, with requests
for further workshops and introduction of
radio astronomy courses at The UWI.
We as the UWI-NRAO NINE hub have
hit the ground running. Five undergraduate
students are also working on image processing
from the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS)
fromNRAO using Raspberry Pis, and working
on designs for a radio telescope. We have plans
to be out in schools with kits to introduce and
engage high school students and to promote
STEM fields through radio astronomy in the
future.
For thousands of years, the only band of
the electromagnetic spectrum that allowed us
to scan the universe was in the optical band,
looking heavenwards with our eyes enhanced
with the optical telescope just about 400 years
ago. It was only in 1932 that this got extended
to the radio band, with the first detection
of radio waves by Karl Jansky who recorded
radiation coming from the Milky Way. Since
then, radio astronomy has been responsible
for the detection of the cosmic microwave
background radiation regarded as evidence of
the Big Bang theory – the beautiful fossils of
the infant universe.
It is in the field of radio astronomy that
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell discovered the first pulsar
(rotating neutron star), a discovery for which
her supervisors contentiously received the
Nobel prize in Physics (1974), excluding her.
She has just now in 2018 received the $3million
Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental
Physics in recognition of her then discovery
of pulsars! Radio astronomy gives us another
window to understand astronomical objects
such as galaxies, stars, masers and quasars. It
is also radio astronomy that leads and paves
the way in the search for extra-terrestrial life.
At the department of Physics inThe UWI,
our foray into astronomy has been wide and
varied. It all began with theoretical astronomy
with the study of quasars, and moved onto the
observation and monitoring of a spectacular
quasar OJ 287 at our SATU observatory on
the Natural Sciences rooftop building, in
collaboration with our colleagues in Finland.
Solar astronomy soon was in the fold
with collaboration with the William Hrudey
Observatory in the Cayman Islands.
The cutting-edge field of Astrobiology soon
put Trinidad on the map as well, with studies at
our pitch lake andmud volcanoes as analogues
for Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) and Mars
respectively, with international collaboration.
It is all about trying to understand life in
the Universe. This project has resulted in a
publication in the prestigious journal “Science”.
We now stand at the brink of another adventure
in another aspect of astronomy – radio
astronomy has arrived in the Caribbean!
collaborations—have access to the instruments they
need to carry out their research, and have access to
specific project data too.
Jason’s UWI Engineering degree helped prepare
him for his NINE training opportunity by giving him
a good foundation in electronics and related software.
He said:
“My undergrad studies in electrical and computer
engineering at UWI were much more of an asset to
have going into the NINE programme than I could
have predicted. Radio astronomy has a notable reliance
on electronics to enable the collection/observation
of radio waves. Being familiar with electronics and
the related software made my introduction to radio
astronomy very smooth.
“The NINE programme contained a significant
emphasis on project management and data science.
Following the nine-week training programme, I had
a greater appreciation for how project management
facilitates successful projects. In particular, when
applying project management techniques to
endeavours such as the UWI NINE Hub, it allows for
greater mitigation of risks, increases accountability and
ultimately, enhances the level of achievement.
“On completion of the programme, I had greater
respect for the science behind radio astronomy. Only
a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is
made up of visible light. Hence, radio astronomy
gives a unique perspective on galactic entities, known
and unknown. Sometimes, it answers previously
unanswerable questions.”
By
ShereenAnnAli
Shereen Ann Ali
is a freelance writer, culture journalist and publications editor
