Colloquium Computer Science, Dr. Gert Kruithof (ASTRON)

Title: IT challenges in Radioastronomy.

Abstract:

Radioastronomy is an area of science that has extreme requirements on information technology. The past decade started tge evolution of its instruments from dishes to phased antenna arrays. The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) which is designed, built and operated by Astron is globally the first transformational telescope of this type. It serves as a pathfinder to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) to be realized in South Africa and Australia by 2020. SKA is expected to be 2 orders of magnitude larger than LOFAR. Radiotelescopes like LOFAR and SKA operate on the principle that signals from a massive amount of small antennas are combined to aggregated signals in software. It allows simultaneous measurements of different types on different parts of the sky. The data rates, compute, and storage are all in the exa-regime. New paradigms in IT are required to be able to afford irs operations, in terms of energy and cost. The presentation will address the radio astronomy context, the IT technology applied and the innovations that lead to the SKA.

Colloquium coordinators are Prof.dr. M. Aiello (e-mail : M.Aiello rug.nl ) and
Prof.dr. M. Biehl (e-mail: M.Biehl rug.nl )

http://www.rug.nl/research/jbi/news/colloquia/computerscience