Third LOFAR Data Processing School November 17-23 2014

I note an announcement from Michael Wise, ASTRON  The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Dwingeloo Netherlands :

http://www.astron.nl/

http://www.astron.nl/about-astron/information-about-astron

http://www.astron.nl/about-astron/history-astron/history-astron

"...The Third LOFAR Data Processing School will take place on Nov. 17-23, 2014 at ASTRON in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands. The school will be hosted by the Radio Observatory at ASTRON and the LOFAR project.

LOFAR has entered its operational phase, and has started delivering scientific and unique data in the relatively unexplored spectral window below 200 MHz. At the present time, 46 operational stations are part of the LOFAR array, of which 38 are located in the Netherlands, and 8 are in Germany, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. New stations will soon be built in Germany and Poland. In parallel, the first versions of several of LOFAR's science pipelines have been developed and are able to generate scientific data products to the numerous users who have obtained observing and processing time through the past and current Cycles.

As with the first two LOFAR data schools, the aim of this workshop is to introduce the LOFAR system to new members of the collaboration who will analyse Cycle data. Students, postdocs, and staff are all encouraged to attend. The school will cover the many aspects of the LOFAR system from the capabilities of the basic station hardware to the software pipelines and science products they produce. Lectures and tutorials will be presented by members of the LOFAR project team as well as staff from the many institutions involved in the collaboration. Hands-on sessions will also be provided to give attendees an opportunity to gain experience with real LOFAR data.

Presentations will be given at a level appropriate for someone new to LOFAR. Familiarity with the concepts of radio interferometry and standard data processing software such as CASA, AIPS, or Myriad will be useful, but not required. Minimum requirements should include some familiarity with scripting languages and in particular Python. Parallel sessions for more expert students are also planned.

Attendance will be limited to approximately 40 people. Initial preference will be given to applicants from teams with accepted Cycle projects. Space will however be reserved for applicants from the general astronomical community, so all potential LOFAR users are encouraged to apply.

Workshop attendees will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs while attending the workshop.

More details about the Third LOFAR Data Processing School will be circulated during the next few weeks. A registration form and methods of payment of the registration fee will be made available online.

You will be reminded by email to visit the website once the registration opens. In the meantime, please mark the dates in your calendars. We look forward to seeing many of you in the Autumn in Dwingeloo..."

The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT)

I refer to RadioNet Advanced Radio Astronomy in Europe:
http://www.radionet-eu.org/wsrt

"The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), owned and operated by ASTRON in The Netherlands, has 14 fully-steerable parabolic reflectors, distributed in an East-West configuration of 2700m length. It is equipped with a sensitive receiver package providing almost continuous coverage at decimeter and centimeter wavelenghts as well as frequency agility. Coupled to its flexible half-million channel correlator, and its modern pulsar and VLBI backends, the WSRT continues to be a uniquely capable facility in the world that is consistently oversubscribed and draws a wide international user base.

The WSRT will see its next major upgrade in 2012-13. An ambitious 21cm receiver system, "Apertif", consisting of phased-array feeds and digital beamformer, developed at ASTRON, will be installed at the focal plane of 12 (out of 14) of the WSRT dishes, replacing the current Multi-Frequency Frontends (MFFEs). The project is fully funded, has passed its critical design review, and has consistently been on schedule. With Apertif, many beams can be formed simultaneously at each dish (nominally 37), enlarging the instantaneous Field-of-View for the 12 WSRT dishes to 8 square degrees (an increase of a factor of 30 compared to the current WSRT) and 16384 spectral channels can be formed over a 300 MHz contiguous bandpass that can be tuned anywhere between 1000 and 1750 MHz. These new capabilities enable unique wide-field continuum, spectral line, and pulsar surveys in a wide 21cm band; the survey speed of the WSRT will increase by a factor 20.

For the first few years, the Apertif-equipped WSRT will be operated as a survey instrument for a large part of the available observing time. A significant part of the observing time will be available to smaller "open-time" projects available to all users. All proposals in the Apertif-era will be internationally peer-reviewed, as is the case for the current WSRT facilities."