I-LOFAR Education Centre, Birr Castle, Co. Offaly 

2-4 March 2020

Summary

This workshop aims to bring together the Irish LOFAR community to present recent scientific results and engage in a workshop on the use of LOFAR data. We encourage contributed talks from any recent or ongoing research with LOFAR, ranging from work in progress to published, covering all topics from astronomy research to data science and computing.

For the data workshop, all LOFAR user-levels are welcome. We’ll be providing introductory talks on LOFAR technology as well as an introduction to scheduling LOFAR observations and processing data. There will be a particular focus on the use of data from LOFAR as a single station, but we’ll also be providing some overviews of using LOFAR ILT data, including data from beam-formed observations and interferometric imaging.

Registration

To register please email eoin.carley@dias.ie by January 15th 2020 with the following info:

• Name:
• Affiliation:
• Talk title (if you wish to give one):
• Dietary restrictions:

The talk formats will be 15 mins + 5 mins of questions (that may change depending on how many contributions we have)

Registration for the workshop is €50 and can be paid in cash. Registration fee will cover daily tea and coffee and dinner on Monday night. There is no lunch provided, but you’ll find plenty of options around Birr.

If you’re not attending dinner the registration fee will be a reduced rate of €30.

Software

All tutorials will be given using the Python programming language (Python v3.6 and v2.7). We recommend that you run Python using Jupiter and/or Spyder, which can be installed using Anaconda. Further details on how to install these packages can be found here. An excellent introduction to Python for the analysis of astronomical data can be found at Python4Astronomers.

Internet Access

Wifi access will be provided via eduroam. Please ensure that you have registered for eduroam by contacting your IT services at your home institution before arriving in Birr.

Schedule

Day 1 (March 2): Intro to LOFAR and recent science results

11:10 – 11:50 Arrival and registration

11:50 – 12:00 Welcome and workshop goals [Eoin Carley]

12:00 – 12:20 Overview of I-LOFAR [Peter Gallagher]

12:20 – 12:45 Overview of the international LOFAR array [Richard Fallows]

12:45 – 13:00 The I-LOFAR Education Centre [Áine Flood]

13:00 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 14:50 A LOFAR survey of the Perseus and Taurus Molecular Clouds [Simon Purser]

14:50 – 15:10 Detecting a flare from a young very-low-mass star with LOFAR [Antony Feeney-Johansson]

15:10 – 15:30 New constraints on cosmic magnetism with LOFAR [Shane O’Sullivan]

15:30 – 15:50 Exploring non-thermal emission from massive stars with LOFAR [Maria Moutzouri]

15:50 – 16:10 Coffee

16:10 – 16:30 Imaging the Solar Corona during the 2015 March 20 Eclipse using LOFAR [Aoife Ryan]

16:30 – 16:50 Scattering of radio waves in the solar corona [Pearse Murphy]

16:50 – 17:10 Deep Learning with ILOFAR [Jeremiah Scully]

17:10 – 17:30 ILOFAR and REALTA: Searching for FRBs [Paul Callanan]

17:30 – 17:45 STREAM creative suite Birr [Caitriona Montgomery]

19:00 – Dinner at the Emmet Restaurant, Dooly’s Hotel, Birr.

Day 2 (March 3): Recent science results and intro to LOFAR data

09:00 – 09:20 Blazar and Pulsar Observations with I-LOFAR [Jeremy Rigney]

09:20 – 09:50 An update on the Polish LOFAR stations (POLFAR) [Alex Filothodoros]

09:50 – 10:10 An update on the Latvian LOFAR station [Artūrs Vrubļevskis]

10:10 – 10:30 Pulsars with LOFAR [David McKenna]

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee

[Workshop]

10:50 – 12:30 Single Station Data Analysis 1 (SST) (Tutorial)(Data)[Aoife Ryan]

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Single Station Data Analysis 2 (BST) (Tutorial) (Data) [Pearse Murphy]

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee

16:00 – 17:30 An intro to LOFAR ILT data – Imaging 1 [Eoin Carley]

20:00 – Astronomy on Tap, with Aine Flood @The Chesnut pub, Birr.

Day 3 (March 4): ILT data analysis

09:00 – 10:30 An intro to LOFAR ILT data – Imaging 2 [EC, AR, PM]

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee

11:00 – 12:30 An intro to LOFAR ILT data – Imaging 3 [EC, AR, PM]

12:30 – 13:00 Future plans and AOB [Peter Gallagher]

[Workshop end]

Exercises from 2018 workshop

See here links to some of the exercises from the I-LOFAR workshop in 2018. The 2020 workshop will be similar to these tutorials, so its recommended you try these before coming:

• Exercise 1: Subband Statistics Tutorial [McKay].
• Exercise 2: Beamlet Statistics / Solar radio burst tutorial [McCauley & Carley].
• Exercise 3: LOFAR solar imaging tutorial. [E. Carley]