Overview of the African Radio Interferometry School:

We are inviting interested students, scientists and professionals to attend the interferometry winter school hosted at North West University (Potchefstroom campus) from 23 to 29 June 2019.

Topics that will be covered:

• Flagging, calibration and imaging of continuum and spectral line data;
• Time domain pulsar sciences and an introduction to transients searches and SETI;
• Extracting information from astronomical data and interpreting the results;
• Introducing new pipeline and automated software for radio astronomy data processing; and
• Hands-on projects to challenge participant's problem solving skills.

Important Information:

Given the limited time of a single intensive week, the focus of the winter school will be on radio astronomy research. Leaving the technical background such as antennas and receivers, antenna temperatures and the use of correlators to measure interference patterns as concepts to be understood when encountered during calibration and imaging processing.

Participants planning to attend the workshop must note that having a personal laptop for the practical work is required. Datasets and software will be provided for downloaded. Processing of data should be done on these laptops to allow participants to take the results with them after the workshop as examples.

Prior astronomy research experience is not a prerequisite. It is however essential that participants have some experience with using Linux, possess basic Python programming skills and have a well-defined mathematical base.