Beginning of my 6 month journey

I am a third year physics student studying at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland. Part of my third year is to participate in a 6 month work placement. I have joined the Trinity College Dublin Astrophysics Group under the supervision of  Prof. Peter Gallagher; where I will be working on the I-LOFAR project. These blogs will be weekly and they will cover my time at Trinity College and the construction of the I-LOFAR project.

Week 1:

Starting with a late night workshop called Codify (http://codifydublin.com/); were we covered Spyder (Python 2.7). In class we covered the basics; such as spyder IDE (Interactive Development Environment); Installing Modules; Python Concepts; Standard Data Types; Basic Operators; Strings; Lists and Tuples; Indexing and Slicing; and functions.

Spyder (Python 2.7); assignment to write a function or script which asks the user for their height in feet and inches; and return their height in metres; and, asks for the user’s weight in stones and pounds, and return in Kg.

The paper “LOFAR The Low-Frequency Array” (https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3550) is the paper I have started reading through; which I have so far covered station configuration; Low Band Antenna; High Band Antenna; and Receiver Unit.

There are three different type of stations the first being the Control Station; which is based near Exloo, Netherlands (24 Control Stations). Then there are remote stations; which there are 14 of them in the Netherlands. The final type of station is the International Stations which there are 8 of them; with the 9th being built in Birr, Co.Offaly, Ireland.