Education

Research or experiment yourself

If you look at the sky on a dark night, do you sometimes wonder what is up there? Do you want to know how the universe works? Do you enjoy making and analyzing your own observations with a gigantic telescope? Then there are many possibilities for you using the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope!

CAMRAS offers various possibilities for individuals or a group of pupils/students in secondary, vocational and higher education to conduct their own research or experiment. Some observation programs such as pulsar analysis with Dwingeloo-Live have ready-to-use manuals and software for data analysis. For research of the neutral hydrogen gas in the spiral arms of the Milky Way and other galaxies using the 21 cm hydrogen line, CAMRAS has manuals and software in development and you can contribute to the design of such a research program.

With a radio telescope you can observe at daytime. It is not necessary to make observations during the night. Whether an object in the sky is observable with the telescope depends on the times of rise and set. These are things that you must take into account and therefore it is wise to contact us far in advance to make arrangements.

– Supervision

In the radio telescope, observations are supervised by one or two CAMRAS volunteers who are authorized telescope operators. During your research or experiment, there are one or two CAMRAS volunteers with whom you keep in touch about the progress. They also contact your supervisor at your educational institution. Your CAMRAS supervisors have an astronomical, educational, technical or scientific background. Some are (or have been) working at ASTRON or JIVE.

If possible, we try to arrange for you a meeting with an ASTRON or JIVE astronomer on the observing day.

Request for Dwingeloo-Live

Dwingeloo-Live is a program for pulsar analysis for high school students. With Dwingeloo-Live you can use the radio telescope to observe pulsars yourself. Pulsars are remnants of stars that remain after the explosion of an ordinary star, with unimaginably large densities and rotational speeds.

The study material consists of a student manual and a web interface for data analysis. On request the teacher can obtain a lecturer’s manual. With the web interface you can analyze data from your own observations, or already existing data from previous observations.

Dwingeloo-Live is aimed at pupils of upper secondary education and is very well suited for a profile assignment or as a practical assignment in the subjects physics or the elective course Nature, Life and Technology (NLT). Dwingeloo-Live is a joint venture between ASTRON and CAMRAS.

On the Dwingeloo-Live webpage you can log in or request an account.