Laboratorium Astrofisika

“Every artist was first an amateur.”

Untuk menjadi yang hebat pasti dimulai dari awal.

Jadi wajar ajah kalo kita emang musti banyak belajar dan sabar untuk maju.

and Yes We are Artist ^_^

Astrophysics Laboratory

 

 

 

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Observations with the Submillimeter Array
 
Instructors: Nimesh Patel and Arielle Moullet
 

The Submillimeter Array (SMA), located near the 4000 m summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, is the world's first telescope for making images at submillimeter wavelengths with angular resolution comparable to optical telescopes. The SMA is an interferometer that combines the signals received from eight separate, movable, antennas to synthesize an aperture up to 0.5 km wide. The SMA has allocated a half night of (highly competitive) observing time to this class. The project involves learning the basics of interferometry, choosing a celestial source for observation, operating the SMA remotely from Cambridge, calibrating the data using specialized software developed for this purpose, and, finally, analyzing the source brightness distribution to derive physical parameters of interest. The observations are new and different every semester, with the potential to obtain results suitable for publication in a scientific journal.

Laboratory Astrophysics

Science is successful because the physical laws we discover on Earth work everywhere and every when. We use laboratory experiments to expand our understanding of physical processes and then apply these results to the processes throughout the Universe. In some cases laboratory experiments can reproduce similar physics. For example, highly charged plasmas can be created in the laboratory to study the collisions between electrons and ions that occur in the hot solar corona. In other cases, such as in the extreme environments of black holes, we cannot reproduce the conditions. However, even in those cases, the pattern of observed spectral signatures allows us to identify the species and determine some of the physical conditions and processes. Spectral features observed in the solar corona are also observed from black hole sources.  

Useful Link

• ADS Bibliographic databases, an essential tool of modern astronomers
  
  
• astro-ph Astronomy e-prints
  
  
• Astronomy Picture of the Day - never disappoints
  
  
• Chandra Coordinate Conversion and Precession Tool
  
  
• Clear Sky Clock - best local cloud forecaster
  
  
• SkyView - virtual telescope
  
  
• AstroWeb - Guide to astronomy on the internet
  
  
• AAS American Astronomical Society
  
  
• Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics by Martin V. Zombeck
  
  
• Research links from Harvard Department of Astronomy