Variables and Slow Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array

Murchison Widefield阵列(MWA)是一个主要的新的研究低频射电天空的国际天文台。卡普兰和克罗夫特将开发观察和识别瞬变和可变射电源的新能力。这将提供有关爆炸和耀斑来源的洞察，从附近的恒星到遥远的星系。为了最大限度地提高下一代射电望远镜的科学回报，这些技术将是必要的。卡普兰和克罗夫特还将通过与个别学生进行有针对性的深入研究项目，以及通过与更多学生定期讨论研究方法、该领域的进展和大型参与性项目，向本科生介绍这一不断增长的领域的兴奋。他们将继续努力，通过公开演讲、学校访问、研讨会、明星聚会和网络材料，增加未被充分代表的少数群体的代表性，探索创造性的方法，通过校园活动和对当地学校的研究人员访问，吸引他们从事科学、技术、工程和数学职业。他们将开发工具，从银河系平面外的深层低频射电图像中恢复瞬变，这些图像是为再电离纪元(EoR)研究而获得的。他们还将在银河系平面进行有针对性的观测，以寻找X射线双星、活动星系核、恒星冕源和以前未知来源的瞬变和可变射电对应物。射电光曲线将向天文学社区发布。表征背景中的可变来源也是从提高采收率图像中提取红移21厘米辐射的重要一步，这是MWA的一个关键项目。

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a major new international observatory to study the low-frequency radio sky. Kaplan and Croft will develop new capabilities to observe and identify transient and variable radio sources. This will provide insight about explosive and flaring sources, from nearby stars to distant galaxies. These techniques will be necessary to maximize the scientific return from the next generation of radio telescopes. Kaplan and Croft will also introduce undergraduate students to the excitement of this growing field, both through focused, in-depth research projects with individual students, and through regular discussions with a larger group of students covering research methods, advances in the field, and large-scale participatory projects. They will continue working to increase representation of underrepresented minorities through public talks, school visits, workshops, star parties, and web materials, exploring creative ways to attract them to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers through campus-based activities and researcher visits to local schools.The Co-PIs are members of the MWA transient collaboration. They will develop tools to recover transients from deep, low-frequency radio images out of the galactic plane obtained for Epoch of Reionization (EoR) studies. They will also conduct pointed observations in the galactic plane to search for transient and variable radio counterparts to X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, stellar coronal sources, and previously unknown sources. Radio light curves will be released to the astronomical community. Characterizing variable sources in the background is also an important step towards extracting the redshifted 21 cm emission from the EoR images, a key project of MWA.