blog – Page 6 – I-LOFAR

Trinity Week & codify&Birr!!!!!

20/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Week 8:

Monday:

Started with editing the new I-LOFAR website, by adding in consortium, and also adding in my blog posts.

I then moved onto POLOFAR data analysis as I am looking at a type 1 storm, and observing its intensity.

Aoife then gave me her education section she had written, so I can add it to the education section of the I-LOFAR website.

I then had a meeting with Alan (web designer), and Eoin (Post Doctorate), about the finalization of the website, which was set live at 18:40.

I then attended my last codify class today where I worked on POLOFAR data. Codify is an amazing workshop for anyone how is new to programming and even people who are pros at programming but want to improve there basic skills.

Trinity Week.

Tuesday:

I started with editing the news section of the web page, where I added hyperlinks. Then I moved onto adding images to the gallery of the I-LOFAR website.

Wednesday:

I went to Birr with Prof. Peter Gallagher, Joe McCauley, Dr. Eoin Carley, and Aoife Ryan (PhD Student). We started our day at Birr down by the I-LOFAR site where we looked at the progress made on the site since we last seen it, and it has moved along very well and they are ahead of schedule for the deliveries that will be coming in on the 28th of April. Eoin then fixed the computer in the Lord Rosse Observatory so we can now see the data again. Then myself, Peter, and Aoife went to speak to Lord Rosse and his daughter (Lady Alicia Parsons) and the site manager (Grainne), about the plans for the education centre which will be just off the site of I-LOFAR, which everyone loved, which was great!!!! Then we all went to the house we will be staying in during the summer while building I-LOFAR; as we needed to make sure it would fit the twenty of us that will be on site; which it does, it is a beautiful house and there grounds of where it is set is stunning, so, lots of pictures of the grounds will be seen in this blog during the summer.

Site of I-LOFAR.

These are the beautiful grounds of Birr, the bottom picture is of the Great Telescope on the beautiful Birr castle grounds.

Thursday:

Started my day with adding images of yesterday trip of I-LOFAR construction site into the new I-LOFAR website gallery (don’t forget to check it out).

I then continued analyzing the POLOFAR station data.

I hope everyone has an amazing Easter!!!!

Posters, Papers, and Falcons!!!

10/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Week 4:

This week I started with reading Diana (Post Doctorate) thesis; where I covered solar activity; and solar cornea where I looked at the flare energy release; I also looked at evaporation, non-thermal electrons, electrons, radiation, accelerated particles, magnetic loop, hard-x-rays, nuclear gamma rays, and the chromosphere, and the photosphere, and the solar cornea and the GOES (Spacecraft) Flare classification.

Aoife Ryan a PhD student working with Prof. Peter Gallagher sent me a link to online lectures on solar cornea.

In codify we covered numpy, arrays, and plotting (inputting data and labeling the axis and title the plot)and how to use different plots (histogram etc.).

My next assignment for codify is to read in two columns of data and plot them. Then work out how much the stock has decreased by since its peak in 2014.

On Tuesday I continued reading Diana (Post Doctorate) thesis and covered solar radio bursts and the types of radio bursts (Type I, Type II, Type III, Type IV), and solar S bursts.

I started on my fourth codify project, where I completed the first part of my assignment, that is to read in the two columns of data and plot them.

I also become a student member of WITS Ireland (Women in Science & Technology).

On Tuesday evening at the Trinity Biomedical Science Institute (TBSI) I attended a PhD poster presentation as Ioana one of the PhD students in the office was presenting her poster on the “The Early Look of Core-Collapse Supernovae”. There was a prize given out for the dean of research which “Ioana poster won ”, it was brilliant!

I also spoke to other PhD students who were researching cervical cancer, cornea transplants (using pig’s cornea as there is a lack of human donors), and Nano research in fuel cells.

I continued Diana pager on plasma physics and magnetohydrodynamic (when plasma oscillations can happen),and magnetic reconnection.

Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Zoology Society had falcons and owls on display on the physics grounds it was amazing!.(http://www.dublinfalconry.com/birds.php) and you can follow them on Facebook.

On Thursday I completed my coding assignment. I have to say that Python is such a nice, easy language to learn, very straight forward and the graphs it produces are very clear, and also the range of graph styles you can use is fantastic. I can say that I will be using Python in my finial year at college and onward in my career.

I also continued Diana’s paper and covered Particles Acceleration, and Radio Emission (brightness of blackbody radiation, intensity of radiation, thermodynamics).

I hope everyone has a HAPPY ST.PATRICKS DAY!!!!

Week Of Reading

10/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Week 3:

Started my week of with reading the paper on “LOFAR: The Low Frequency Array”; were I covered the Processing Pipeline (Standard, Long-Baseline, Known Pulsar, CR Event, Transient Detection) and then I looked at the system performance (System Stability), were I looked at the High Band Antenna (HBA) and the Low Band Antenna (LBA).

I also became a member of “GitHub”(https://github.com/) a programming community to share code and help other from around the world.

In Codify I covered creating a list and commands, making 2d lists, and 3d lists; we got an in-class assignment to make a function pick lotto numbers and not repeat the numbers it has already picked, at the end of the class we covered a little on while loops. My third assignment is to write a function or code which will sort a list of elements.

On Tuesday I covered the system performance (UV-Coverage; and Angular Resolution) with an angular resolution equation; and the bandpass; and beam characterization.

For lunch, there was a woman in science lunch were women and men in science had lunch together and discussed issues women face in science. It was interesting but as a young women scientist I have yet to experience any negativity to me being in physics.

On Thursday I read “LOFAR: The Low-Frequency Array”, continued reading the section on system performance, where I covered sensitivity, confusion noise, RFI environment, Image Quality, and Beam-Formed Modes.

I finished reading the “LOFAR: The Low Frequency Array”; where I covered the Key Science Drivers: Epoch of reionization, surveying the low-frequency sky, the transient radio sky (Gamma-ray burst (GRBs)), Pulsar studies and survey (82MHz), Astroparticle Physics, Magnetic Field in the universe, Solar physics, and space weather. Then I covered the Current and Future Developments: Final Construction, and Functionality Enhancement.

Diana a Post Doctorate gave me her thesis to read, which is on “LOFAR Tied-array Imaging and Spectroscopy of Solar Radio Bursts”.

On Friday we had our team meeting were we covered what each member of the team has been up to on their projects since the last meeting.

We got news that the I-LOFAR equipment will come into Dublin Docks on the 27^th of April 2017, and will arrive at Birr on the 28^th of April 2017.

I-LOFAR visit

10/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Week 2:

Monday was a day of coding and reading research papers on LOFAR capabilities and design. My next assignment for codify is to write a code which will print the numbers from 1 to 100. If the number is divisible by 3, print “BISH!”. If the number is divisible by 5, print “BASH!”. If the number is divisible by both 3 and 5, print “BISHBASHBOSH!”.

Tuesday was an early morning heading to Birr to visit the I-LOFAR site. When we arrived we meet with the haling company that will be taking the equipment onto the site. There was also a BBC Northern Ireland film crew with us on site making a documentary on my supervisor first PhD student who is also a truck driver,and will be haling the LOFAR equipment from the Netherlands to Ireland. I also walked around the site of which LOFAR will be built on, and looked at the entries onto the site which the equipment is to be brought through.

During the week I also covered the Transient Buffer Boards; and the Local Control Unit; used in LOFAR and I then moved onto looking at the Wide Area Network and the central processing and started the software control infrastructure looking at monitoring and control systems; and the calibration of the LOFAR antennas paper.

Later on in the week I covered the monitoring and control system; and the system health monitoring (SHM); and the event triggers; and the Observing Modes; and Interferometric imaging; and the beam-formed modes (Coherent Stokes; Incoherent Stokes; and Fly’s Eye); and the direct storage modes.

I also had journal club last Friday were the Post doctorates covered the papers on “Extreme geomagnetic storms: Probabilistic forecasts and their uncertainties” and “Quantifying the daily economic impact of extreme space weather due to failure in electricity transmission infrastructure”; it was so interesting as they made the papers into power points, which we then had discussions on how these affect may affect Ireland.

Beginning of my 6 month journey

10/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

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.

Get Excited for the New I-LOFAR Website & boxes

07/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Monday:

I received an email early this morning from Alan the web designer for the new I-LOFAR website, to met with him at 3pm, where we discussed the new I-LOFAR website and where everything is on it and what we are keeping (such as the headings), the website look amazing and so modern. For the POLOFAR data I received off Diana, I edited the script that was given to me, to have labels on the dynamic spectrum.

I then started on one of the I-LOFAR posters which will be on I-LOFAR site for visitors to see “what I-LOFAR is all about”.

In Codify I continued my project on the analysis of shark attacks, were I fixed my NaN problem, and then made a graph of the top 10 shark attacks as a x marker plot.

Tuesday:

At 11am I had a meeting with the rest of the I-LOFAR team with Alan the web designer (as they had yet to speak with him), were we discussed what headers that needed to be changed and what content need to be up as soon as possible. So, I am working with Diana (Postdoc) and Aoife (PhD) to do the majority of this website with me.

Also on the 16^th of May we will be going to the French embassy as my supervisor is receiving an award for his outreach science in France.

Wednesday:

I started my day with editing the new I-LOFAR website, I needed to change a few heading and I cannot create them, as I am not the administrator of the website. On the new website I edited the “What of I-LOFAR?” and “The Build”, where I put in a timeline of the I-LOFAR journey. Later in the day I went to a “manual handling course”, for the build of I-LOFAR.

Thursday:

I spent the day editing the technology section of the website, where we have information of the LOFAR technology, the transport team, the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) , and the International LOFAR station.

Friday:

Spent the day editing and changing the images in the technology section of the I-LOFAR website. I also added in some more team members, and also the list of collaborators, which I received from Prof. Peter Gallagher. I also watched the Science Gallery (Trinity College Dublin) talk on Autonomous Vehicles of Tomorrow Showcase 2017 on YouTube. But everyone look forward to the 10th of April 2017 as the New I-LOFAR website will be released.

MONDAY NEW I-LOFAR WEBSITE, EVERYONE GET EXCITED!!!!!!

First Analysis of data & Shark Attack!!!

05/04/2017/in blog /by alomeara

Monday:

I started my week with “Codify” were the class was started by quickly going over the use of “PIP” which is an installation method, and also the “Anaconda” which is also used to install methods onto Python too, but for my laptop “PIP” seems to work in my command prompt . I then moved onto the codify project, which is to analysis “shark attack” data. I started with the importing of pandas, and read in the excel file. Then I asked for how many males where attacked and how many females where attacked. Then I had got the program to count the activities and which activity had the most shark attacks.

Tuesday:

I started to cover how I can remove “NaN” in the excel files on shark attacks. Later in the day I got an email off Joe (Senior Experimental Officer at Trinity College Dublin) to convert the list of equipment from PDF to an Excel. This list contains the material for I-LOFAR project which is coming from the Netherlands.

Wednesday:

I started with cleaning up the excel file, which had the materials for the construction of I-LOFAR. I then went over my codify project which I found out how to remove the “NaN” and also how to remove the second time “Swimming” that appears in the top 20 activities that have been involved in a shark attack. I also got the right script to read through the POLOFAR data that Diana gave me.

Thursday:

I had covered some of my codify project for the morning so I made a plan out for myself to complete the codify project on shark attack analysis. I had completed two graphs from the POLOFAR data.

Friday:

At 12pm I had a meeting with Peter(Supervisor), Aoife(PhD Student), and Eoin(Post Doc), where Aoife discussed her trip to ASTON in the Netherlands, and she got amazing images of the sun and moon!!! Then at 2pm till 5:10pm we had a solar science meeting with PhD students and post docs where we covered “European Radio Telescope Array”, Solar flares, Simulations, Space Weather, Solar Monitor, ASTON Netherlands, Power Network, and plasma flow on the sun. I also spoke at the meeting on what I was doing and what I am aiming to cover next week, as I-LOFAR will be releasing their new website and I will be adding material to it, and also make two posters for the I-LOFAR project which will be used on the site for the public, which will explain to them what I-LOFAR is and what we aim to use it for, and also describe what they are seeing. Peter also gave me a book called “An Introduction to Radio Astronomy”, which is a book for graduate level students and want to do radio astronomy. Then I am also planning on adding to the script Diana gave me to make the graph more appealing, and then to analysis certain frequencies.

Online Lectures & Slack !!!!

01/04/2017/in blog /by Hannah Currivan

Monday:

I started my week with covering online lectures where I focused mainly on lectures covering “Radio Observations of Coronal Mass Ejections”, which Aoife (PhD Student) recommended.

I started my lectures covering the preliminaries, where they covered the specific Intensity, the Flux Density, and the Units, then I moved onto radioactive transfer and optical depth; also, covering the brightness temperature and then rewriting the radioactive transfer equation, were I then covered the relevant radio emission mechanism, and the Bremsstrahlung, Gyromagnetic Radiation, and Plasma Radiation.

In codify we covered “pandas”, this is great for data analysis as it will read in spreadsheet format. We had an in class assignment were we had to read a file on crimes in New York City, it was so interesting as we got to separate the offenses and label where in New York City they came from in our data.

Tuesday:

I continued with my online lectures where I covered the derivation of plasma radiation with the effects of the electric coulomb force and Gauss’s Law. I also covered the plasma frequency types and their values. I then moved onto radio observations in general (emission mechanisms, range of observation), and the solar radio blasts types from 1960s (Type 1,2,3,4). I also looked at the standard flare-CME model (H (alpha) ribbons, X-Ray loops, prominence, cavity, plasma pileup, and the shock). I also looked over the white light emission: Thomson scattering, and the detectability of thermal radio CME, and thermal radio detectability of CME body. I also looked at the rare thermal radio CMEs.

I looked at the MatPlotLib website which is great to view different types of plotting code for your data.

I moved onto my second lecture which covered gyromagnetic radiation and looked at the thermal electrons, relativistic electrons, and electron gyrofrequency. I also looked at why we are interested in the coronas and CMEs, and why the shock even happens and the shock jump conditions.

I will be heading down to Birr on the 27^th and 28^th of April to receive the first deliveries of the I-LOFAR equipment, with the rest of the I-LOFAR team which is just so exciting!!!!

Wednesday:

I finished my online lecturers where I covered Type II spectral feat.

Then I started analysing the “NYPD 7 Major Felony Incident Map” from Mondays Codify class; where I was trying to see if I can analysis the data on “Day of Week” and the “Borough”.

Thursday:

Next Monday I will start a Codify project, I have decided to pick the project on a data analysis project on a dataset containing details on every recorded shark attack in history; this project will be done over 3 weeks, which I am so excited about!!!

Diana (postdoc) gave me some LOFAR data to look at which is amazing!!!

Next weeks blog I hope to have some images of the data.

Friday:

This week we had journal club where we covered a paper on “Historical space weather in Japan &China”, it was so interesting, especially the way they symbolised the aurora as an event of possible disaster.

We then looked over the app called “Slack” as we needed a place to send documents to each other and chat to each other, without have chains of emails; so, slack is the best option for a better way to collaborate and have small group discussions.