Variables and Slow Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array

Murchison Widefield Array（MWA）是一个主要的新的国际天文台，用于研究低频无线电天空。卡普兰和克罗夫特将开发新的能力，以观察和识别瞬态和可变的无线电源。 这将提供有关爆炸和耀斑源的见解，从附近的恒星到遥远的星系。这些技术对于最大限度地提高下一代射电望远镜的科学回报是必要的。Kaplan和Croft还将向本科生介绍这一不断发展的领域的兴奋，无论是通过与个别学生的重点，深入的研究项目，还是通过与更大的学生群体定期讨论，涵盖研究方法，该领域的进展，以及大规模的参与性项目。他们将继续通过公开演讲、学校访问、研讨会、星星派对和网络材料，努力提高代表性不足的少数民族的代表性，探索创造性的方法，通过校园活动和研究人员访问当地学校，吸引他们从事科学、技术、工程和数学职业。 他们将开发工具，从再电离时代（EoR）研究获得的银河系平面的深层低频无线电图像中恢复瞬变。 他们还将在银道面进行定点观测，以寻找X射线双星、活动星系核、恒星日冕源和以前未知的源的瞬态和可变射电对应物。 射电光变曲线将向天文学界公布。 表征背景中的可变源也是从EoR图像中提取红移21 cm发射的重要一步，这是MWA的关键项目。

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.