Workshop on Educational Radio (and Optical) Astronomy

在过去的17年里，Daniel Reichart博士(北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校)和一小群来自全国各地的射电天文学教育工作者，带领15名学生，其中大部分是本科生，也有一些高中生，偶尔也有普通公众的一员，在西弗吉尼亚州绿岸的国家射电天文学天文台举办了一个独特的、密集的、为期一周的研讨会，名为“射电天文学教育研究”(ERIRA)。大多数天文学项目都不教授射电天文学，至少在观测或实验室环境中不是这样。这主要是因为建造、操作和维护足够大的射电望远镜的成本高得令人望而却步，因此需要ERIRA。根据这一奖项，Reichart博士和他的团队将在三个夏天继续作为射电天文学和光学天文学的研讨会。光学天文学方面是基于天网机器人望远镜网络和塞罗托洛美洲天文台的全色机器人光学监测和偏振望远镜(PROMPT)望远镜的发展。射电天文学是一种很好的教学工具。与光学天文不同，它可以在学生自然醒着的白天进行，而且可以在大多数天气条件下进行。此外，与光学天文学相结合，它构成了一个强大的教学包--促进了对电磁光谱的更好理解，以及多波长观测在21世纪天文学中所起的重要作用。此外，它使学生接触到广泛的天体物理现象-太阳系物体、恒星形成区、超新星遗迹、星系、类星体-以及广泛的发射过程--黑体、同步辐射、韧致辐射、无线电和光学发射线--其方式与仅在一个或另一个波段体验时截然不同。

For the last 17 years, Dr. Daniel Reichart (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and a small group of radio astronomy educators from across the country, have taken 15 mostly undergraduate students but also a few high school students and occasionally a member of the general public on a unique, intense, one-week workshop at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia called "Educational Research in Radio Astronomy" (ERIRA). Most astronomy programs do not teach radio astronomy, at least not in an observational or laboratory setting. This is primarily due to the prohibitive cost of building, operating, and maintaining sufficiently large radio telescopes, thus the need for ERIRA. Under this award, Dr. Reichart and his team will continue ERIRA for three summers as both a workshop in radio astronomy and in optical astronomy as well. The optical astronomy aspects are based on the development of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network and the Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes (PROMPT) telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.Radio astronomy is a wonderful teaching tool. Unlike optical astronomy, it can be done during the day when students are naturally awake, and it can be done through most weather conditions. Furthermore, coupled with optical astronomy it makes a powerful teaching package - fostering a better understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum and the important role that multi-wavelength observations play in 21st-century astronomy. Furthermore, it exposes students to a wide range of astrophysical phenomena - solar system objects, star-forming regions, supernova remnants, galaxies, quasars - and a wide range of emission processes - blackbody, synchrotron, bremsstrahlung, radio and optical emission lines - in ways that are fundamentally different than when they are experienced in only one waveband or the other.