SARA 2021 Eastern Conference Keynote Speaker

SARA 2021 Eastern Conference Keynote Speaker

Dr. Sander Weinreb

Dr. Weinreb was awarded the 2008 Grote Reber Medal for lifetime innovative contributions to radio astronomy. His pioneering developments of novel techniques and instrumentation over nearly half a century helped to define modern radio astronomy.

 http://www.weinreb.org/sandy/index.html

New Directions in Radio Astronomy

In the past we believed that astronomical sources other than planets only varied over times of millions of years. In the recent several years, a whole new world of sources with variations in the time scales of milliseconds to months have become exciting targets for new research.   The most widely studied time-variable sources in radio astronomy are the Fast Radio Bursts, FRBs – a ms. pulse of radiation in the low microwave range which sweeps in frequency and in most cases does not repeat.   The search and characterization for these single-event objects are  tantalizing objectives for amateur radio astronomers.

This talk will begin with discussion of FRBs followed by descriptions of new radio astronomy arrays, and new LNAs with noise of the order of 10K without a need for costly cryogenic cooling.