Fifth NAIC/NRAO Single-Dish Summer School

First Announcement

NAIC (Arecibo) and NRAO (Green Bank) are organizing the fifth NAIC-NRAO school on single-dish radio astronomy. This will be held from 12-18 July 2009 at the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico. The objective of the school is to provide graduate students, post-docs, and experts in other fields of astronomy with both knowledge and practical experience of the techniques and applications of single-dish radio astronomy.

The school will be based around an intensive series of lectures from experts. A significant part of each participant's time at the school will be spent performing a hands-on radio-astronomy project. For this, they will make observations with either the Arecibo 305-m telescope or the Green Bank 100-m (GBT) telescope, analyze the data acquired, and interpret the results.

The primary goals of the school are:

• to provide participants with a strong grounding in the fundamental elements of single-dish radio astronomy, and its relationship to other branches of observational astronomy;
• to give an overview of current and emerging capabilities with single-dish radio telescopes, the techniques used with them, and the associated instrumentation;
• to provide direct "hands-on" experience with the World's largest single-dish radio telescopes, and introduce participants to the hardware and software used in taking and reducing observations.

Both lecturers and participants are invited to contribute posters describing research conducted with single dishes.

A copy of the Proceedings of the First Single Dish School, as published in the ASP Conference Series, will be provided to this year's participants as part of the registration fee.

The number of participants will be limited to approximately 45 people. A registration fee of $200 will include: travel between San Juan airport and Arecibo Observatory, the welcome reception, lunches during the school, social events, the school banquet, and a copy of the proceedings. Participants will be housed either at the Observatory or in nearby hotels. They are expected to cover the cost of their travel to Puerto Rico, lodgings and other meals. However, some financial assistance is expected to be available, especially for applicants based at US institutions.

The school web page is to be found at http://www.naic.edu/~astro/sdss5/