PARTNeR: RADIO ASTRONOMY FOR
STUDENTS
O. Morata, O. Alles, and O. Suárez
Laboratorio de Astrofı́sica Espacial y Fı́sica Fundamental (INTA), Apt. 50727,
E-28080, Madrid, SPAIN
omorata@laeff.inta.es
Summary. PARTNeR is the acronym for Academic Project with NASA Radio
Telescope at Robledo. The 34-m antenna in Robledo de Chavela is used by high
school and university students to learn about radio astronomy and physics. The
main project under way is the observation of radio-bursts in X-ray binaries. High
school teachers joining our program are given a training course to learn the basis
of Radio Astronomy. They also receive some practical lessons to teach children the
physical fundamentals of Radio Astronomy. At universities, PARTNeR is a tool to
carry out practical lessons in Physics, Astrophysics or Engineering for undergraduate
or graduate students.
1 Introduction
PARTNeR (Proyecto Académico con el Radio Telescopio de NASA en Robledo) is an educational program which allows students to use a 34-m antenna
located in NASA’s Deep Space Complex at Robledo de Chavela (Madrid) for
classroom radio astronomy obervations. The Laboratorio de Astrofı́sica Espacial y Fı́sica Fundamental (LAEFF) is in charge of the Coordination Center
of PARTNeR and manages the use of the antenna. It also gives scientifical
and technical support to users and is in charge of the educational program.
The PARTNeR telescope has a main dish of 34-m in diameter, with a
Cassegrain focus and an equatorial mount. By means of a dicroic mirror, it can
simultaneously observe radiation at two different wavelength bands: S (12 cm)
and X (4 cm). The beamwidths are ∼ 0.2 and ∼ 0.06 degrees, respectively. The
telescope control system is a distributed network of equipment between the
LAEFF, located at Villafranca del Castillo (Madrid), and the NASA complex
at Robledo de Chavela.
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O. Morata, O. Alles, and O. Suárez
2 Educational program
The main aim of the PARTNeR program is to offer a new educational experience about science to high-school and university students, giving them
the chance to participate in a real scientifical project. Students are able to
remotely control the antenna via the internet and command it to collect data.
These data will also be available to the scientific community.
Teachers receive training before using the telescope. They must attend a
course in the LAEFF (Madrid) facilities where they learn the fundamentals
of radio astronomy and how to operate the PARTNeR antenna. Teachers
must also complete two mandatory courses, which are publically available in
our web page (http://laeff.inta.es/partner). The first course, on the physical
bases of radio astronomy, covers several topics like the properties, emission
processes, and behavior of the electromagnetic radiation. The second course is
an introduction to Radio Astronomy that shows how a radio telescope works,
what are the usual observing techniques, and how radio sources look like when
pointing a telescope towards them.
3 Observations
There are several scientific projects that can be pursued with the PARTNeR
project. The main one up to now is the monitoring of the radio emission
of X-ray binaries. In particular, Cygnus-X3, LSI+61303 and SS 433. Quasar
variability will also be studied in the future.
High-school students and amateur astronomers make observations of a few
selected targets, in order to gather a long-term data set of their radio fluxes,
searching for flares. The results of the observations will be put in our webpage,
so that any scientist can use them for their own research. Therefore, students
provide a service to the international scientific community.
The operational phase of PARTNeR started in January 2004. Around 50
high-schools in Spain and Portugal, 5 universities, and 6 societies of amateur
astronomers have been involved in the project. During the course 2005-2006,
20 high-schools or universities participated in the project, in 30 observing
sessions, and ∼ 425 students had the chance to use the telescope.
4 How to participate
To participate in the PARTNeR project or for further information, please
refer to our e-mail address (partner@laeff.inta.es) or visit our web page
(http://laeff.inta.es/partner ), where several brief practical lessons, observation templates, games, and other material are also available to help children
understand radio astronomy concepts.