Variables and Slow Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array

默奇森宽场阵列（MWA）是一个主要的新的国际天文台，用于研究低频射电天空。Kaplan和Croft将开发新的观测和识别瞬态和可变射电源的能力。这将提供从附近恒星到遥远星系的爆炸和耀斑源的见解。为了使下一代射电望远镜的科学回报最大化，这些技术是必要的。卡普兰和克罗夫特还将通过与个别学生进行重点深入的研究项目，以及与更大的学生群体定期讨论研究方法、该领域的进展和大规模的参与性项目，向本科生介绍这个不断发展的领域的兴奋。他们将继续努力，通过公开演讲、学校访问、研讨会、明星派对和网络材料，增加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、工程和数学事业。co - pi是MWA临时协作的成员。他们将开发工具，从再电离时代（EoR）研究中获得的银河系平面外的低频无线电图像中恢复瞬态。他们还将在银河平面上进行有针对性的观测，以寻找x射线双星的瞬变和可变射电对应物、活动星系核、恒星日冕源和以前未知的源。射电光曲线将被发布给天文团体。背景中可变源的特征化也是提取EoR图像中21 cm红移发射的重要步骤，这是MWA的一个重点项目。

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.