Good morning, and an early Happy New Year to everyone.
I first learned of this SIG Saturday; very cool. I have downloaded and have read the archives of the mailing list (nothing like getting a little history, even if that isn't but a month long) and I plan on attending the meeting on the 11th, unless something work related comes up.
By way of introductions, I am CIO at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI), which is one of the few observatories with both optical and radio capabilities.
We currently have several optical instruments, from a pair of solar telescopes with Ethernet video webcams to a 16 inch DFM with an Apogee Ethernet CCD, and we have four dish-type radio instruments: two 26 meter X-Y mounted prime focus parabolics good up to 12-14GHz; a 12.2 meter prime focus parabolic good to 26-30GHz; and a 4.6 meter prime focus parabolic good up to the low millimeter range. We also have a few HF arrays for use with the Radio Jove program, observing the sun and Jupiter in the 20-28 MHz band. We also host another radio instrument from Virginia Tech; see http://www.ece.vt.edu/swe/eta/ for lots and lots of details on this exciting instrument.
The 12.2 meter is in need of major work, and is mothballed pending funding.
The two 26 meter telescopes are in the midst of drive and feed upgrades; DFM Engineering is performing the drive upgrades (this is the second drive upgrade on these telescopes that they've done for us; this gets us 27 bit absolute encoders and Ethernet connectivity for control and telemetry); the feeds are being upgraded to thermally stabilized dual, coaxial 2.4GHz and 8.5GHz for extreme scattering event research as an interferometer, funded through an NSF MRI grant. Also, PARI is collaborating with Furman University Astronomer Dr. David Moffett on pulsar monitoring research in the 318MHz band; the instrument is currently off-line, but the pulsar radiometer backend is on Linux (currently an older Fedora).
The 4.6 meter Andrew parabolic is in active use for our School of Galactic Radio Astronomy educational program, and has a 1.42GHz hydrogen RF chain and spectrometer. This telescope is currently internet controllable through a Java applet in-browser (the applet doesn't work with the F8 java stack, unfortunately), and with a custom java servlet backend. The SGRA program teaches middle school teachers how run the telescope remotely, how to perform doppler spectroscopy to determine the galactic rotational characteristics, and how to teach their classes how to do this. The telescope has a smiley face painted on it (long story), so it is nicknamed 'Smiley' for obvious reasons.
Smiley also gets used for solar astronomy at 1.4GHz (we have a program, called Space Science Lab, that teaches high school sophomores and juniors, in a one week on-site seminar setting, all about solar astronomy, from optical all the way down to 20MHz radio, and Smiley is a part of that. In the SSL program, the students spend one week on site, learning astronomy, radio astronomy, basic electronics, soldering, troubleshooting, etc: they build a Radio Jove kit radiometer, and if they don't have their own PC, we give them one with the require software preloaded; out of 57 kits attempted at this point, 56 have been successfully constructed within the one week seminar; the 57th kit had a bad PC board).
We have a number of other programs; you can see the breadth of them on our website at www.pari.edu
Personally, I have run Red Hat and Fedora Linux since Red Hat Linux 4.1 in 1997. I was the PostgreSQL Global Development Group's RPM maintainer from 1999 through 2004 (my base spec file is still in RHEL4), when I passed the maintainership to Devrim Gunduz, as personal reasons prevented me from doing the builds in a timely fashion at that time. Since then, of course, automated buildsystems have come of age, and packaging is a much simpler process than it was then.
On the subject of packages, I see in the rejected packages list IRAF. Getting permission from UCAR to distribute NCAR as a part of Fedora would be killer, as IRAF is de rigeur for optical astronomy. For radio astronomy, getting the former AIPS and AIPS++ packages, as well as the currently maintained CASA packages, in Fedora would be killer, as that is pretty much required for single dish and interferometer imagery in radio astronomy.
Also, GNUradio has an astronomy section; with a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) with a DBRX daughterboard, and a medium-sized dish (2-4 meters) useful 1.4GHz radio astronomy can be done. GNUradio requires wx, and the radio astronomy examples require PyEphem; getting PyEphem in Fedora would be great in general for astronomy, as PyEphem does all the interesting calculations, including the absolutely required (for radio astronomy) local standard of rest. Having GNUradio packages (it's in Debian already) would be great (I might be able to do these if no one else does them).
In any case, it's great to see this SIG form, and I look forward to being able to help in some fashion. I see several names I recognize here; Jef, spot, in particular. We use Aurora Linux on a couple of our backends, running on an E6500 and E5500 Sun Enterprise pair.
On Dec 31, 2007 8:17 AM, Lamar Owen lowen@pari.edu wrote:
Good morning, and an early Happy New Year to everyone.
I first learned of this SIG Saturday; very cool. I have downloaded and have read the archives of the mailing list (nothing like getting a little history, even if that isn't but a month long) and I plan on attending the meeting on the 11th, unless something work related comes up.
By way of introductions, I am CIO at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI), which is one of the few observatories with both optical and radio capabilities.
Ahh the place I always wanted to work :). Congrats to see you Lamar..
We currently have several optical instruments, from a pair of solar telescopes with Ethernet video webcams to a 16 inch DFM with an Apogee Ethernet CCD, and we have four dish-type radio instruments: two 26 meter X-Y mounted prime focus parabolics good up to 12-14GHz; a 12.2 meter prime focus parabolic good to 26-30GHz; and a 4.6 meter prime focus parabolic good up to the low millimeter range. We also have a few HF arrays for use with the Radio Jove program, observing the sun and Jupiter in the 20-28 MHz band. We also host another radio instrument from Virginia Tech; see http://www.ece.vt.edu/swe/eta/ for lots and lots of details on this exciting instrument.
Wow.. that seems like a lot of stuff added since 1994.. or better advertised.
On the subject of packages, I see in the rejected packages list IRAF. Getting permission from UCAR to distribute NCAR as a part of Fedora would be killer, as IRAF is de rigeur for optical astronomy. For radio astronomy, getting the former AIPS and AIPS++ packages, as well as the currently maintained CASA packages, in Fedora would be killer, as that is pretty much required for single dish and interferometer imagery in radio astronomy.
What are the licenses for AIPS? I havent looked at it since I think early 1990s (or I am thinking of a different project.. I am on Nyquil at the moment.).
Congrats on the CIO position... and I will look at the GNUradio stuff.
On Monday 31 December 2007, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On Dec 31, 2007 8:17 AM, Lamar Owen lowen@pari.edu wrote:
Good morning, and an early Happy New Year to everyone.
Ahh the place I always wanted to work :). Congrats to see you Lamar..
Yes, Smooge, you're one of the ones I recognize, having seen you around for several years on the lists....
Wow.. that seems like a lot of stuff added since 1994.. or better advertised.
Yes, we've added a lot. The place was pretty empty when PARI took over the site. Getting ready to add more, too....getting the OC3 last April was a serious boon to our credibility. Getting it extended through March 2010 was even better.
What are the licenses for AIPS? I havent looked at it since I think early 1990s (or I am thinking of a different project.. I am on Nyquil at the moment.).
AIPS and CASA (when CASA is released) are both under GPL v2.
Congrats on the CIO position... and I will look at the GNUradio stuff.
Many thanks!
The USRP with DBRX works pretty good for hydrogen spectroscopy; join the GNUradio lists, and ask for Marcus Leech to find out more about its use in radio astronomy (he's the author of the radio astronomy GNUradio samples).
Hello Lamar,
Lamar Owen wrote:
Good morning, and an early Happy New Year to everyone.
I first learned of this SIG Saturday; very cool. I have downloaded and have read the archives of the mailing list (nothing like getting a little history, even if that isn't but a month long) and I plan on attending the meeting on the 11th, unless something work related comes up.
By way of introductions, I am CIO at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI), which is one of the few observatories with both optical and radio capabilities.
Wow, happy to see you here! :)
We currently have several optical instruments, from a pair of solar telescopes with Ethernet video webcams to a 16 inch DFM with an Apogee Ethernet CCD, and we have four dish-type radio instruments: two 26 meter X-Y mounted prime focus parabolics good up to 12-14GHz; a 12.2 meter prime focus parabolic good to 26-30GHz; and a 4.6 meter prime focus parabolic good up to the low millimeter range. We also have a few HF arrays for use with the Radio Jove program, observing the sun and Jupiter in the 20-28 MHz band. We also host another radio instrument from Virginia Tech; see http://www.ece.vt.edu/swe/eta/ for lots and lots of details on this exciting instrument.
The 12.2 meter is in need of major work, and is mothballed pending funding.
The two 26 meter telescopes are in the midst of drive and feed upgrades; DFM Engineering is performing the drive upgrades (this is the second drive upgrade on these telescopes that they've done for us; this gets us 27 bit absolute encoders and Ethernet connectivity for control and telemetry); the feeds are being upgraded to thermally stabilized dual, coaxial 2.4GHz and 8.5GHz for extreme scattering event research as an interferometer, funded through an NSF MRI grant. Also, PARI is collaborating with Furman University Astronomer Dr. David Moffett on pulsar monitoring research in the 318MHz band; the instrument is currently off-line, but the pulsar radiometer backend is on Linux (currently an older Fedora).
The 4.6 meter Andrew parabolic is in active use for our School of Galactic Radio Astronomy educational program, and has a 1.42GHz hydrogen RF chain and spectrometer. This telescope is currently internet controllable through a Java applet in-browser (the applet doesn't work with the F8 java stack, unfortunately), and with a custom java servlet backend. The SGRA program teaches middle school teachers how run the telescope remotely, how to perform doppler spectroscopy to determine the galactic rotational characteristics, and how to teach their classes how to do this. The telescope has a smiley face painted on it (long story), so it is nicknamed 'Smiley' for obvious reasons.
Is the java applet available somewhere? I'm wondering why it's not working with IcedTea java.
Smiley also gets used for solar astronomy at 1.4GHz (we have a program, called Space Science Lab, that teaches high school sophomores and juniors, in a one week on-site seminar setting, all about solar astronomy, from optical all the way down to 20MHz radio, and Smiley is a part of that. In the SSL program, the students spend one week on site, learning astronomy, radio astronomy, basic electronics, soldering, troubleshooting, etc: they build a Radio Jove kit radiometer, and if they don't have their own PC, we give them one with the require software preloaded; out of 57 kits attempted at this point, 56 have been successfully constructed within the one week seminar; the 57th kit had a bad PC board).
We have a number of other programs; you can see the breadth of them on our website at www.pari.edu
That's a nice gear. I hope to have chance visit your institute if I'm around someday. :)
Personally, I have run Red Hat and Fedora Linux since Red Hat Linux 4.1 in 1997. I was the PostgreSQL Global Development Group's RPM maintainer from 1999 through 2004 (my base spec file is still in RHEL4), when I passed the maintainership to Devrim Gunduz, as personal reasons prevented me from doing the builds in a timely fashion at that time. Since then, of course, automated buildsystems have come of age, and packaging is a much simpler process than it was then.
:)
On the subject of packages, I see in the rejected packages list IRAF. Getting permission from UCAR to distribute NCAR as a part of Fedora would be killer, as IRAF is de rigeur for optical astronomy. For radio astronomy, getting the former AIPS and AIPS++ packages, as well as the currently maintained CASA packages, in Fedora would be killer, as that is pretty much required for single dish and interferometer imagery in radio astronomy.
Regarding Iraf, x11iraf is under review, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=249614 Since one month I'm trying to contact Mr. Romanovski, which after years of studies in US, is back in Russia.
Also, GNUradio has an astronomy section; with a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) with a DBRX daughterboard, and a medium-sized dish (2-4 meters) useful 1.4GHz radio astronomy can be done. GNUradio requires wx, and the radio astronomy examples require PyEphem; getting PyEphem in Fedora would be great in general for astronomy, as PyEphem does all the interesting calculations, including the absolutely required (for radio astronomy) local standard of rest. Having GNUradio packages (it's in Debian already) would be great (I might be able to do these if no one else does them).
PyEphem and GNU Radio are on our wish list as well and I hope I'll package it.
If someone is interesting in packaging GNU/Radio, Trond's spec file is available at http://trondd.fedorapeople.org/spec_files/.
In any case, it's great to see this SIG form, and I look forward to being able to help in some fashion. I see several names I recognize here; Jef, spot, in particular. We use Aurora Linux on a couple of our backends, running on an E6500 and E5500 Sun Enterprise pair.
Please, don't hesitate to come to our next meeting, so we can discuss what Fedora do for pari.edu.
On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Marek Mahut wrote:
Lamar Owen wrote:
The 4.6 meter Andrew parabolic is in active use for our School of Galactic Radio Astronomy educational program, and has a 1.42GHz hydrogen RF chain and spectrometer. This telescope is currently internet controllable through a Java applet in-browser (the applet doesn't work with the F8 java stack, unfortunately), and with a custom java servlet backend.
Is the java applet available somewhere? I'm wondering why it's not working with IcedTea java.
The login page is at http://smileycontrol.pari.edu/smiley
I can't test past this page, because the username and password fields cannot take my data entry.
We have a number of other programs; you can see the breadth of them on our website at www.pari.edu
That's a nice gear. I hope to have chance visit your institute if I'm around someday. :)
I'd be glad you show you around.
Regarding Iraf, x11iraf is under review, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=249614 Since one month I'm trying to contact Mr. Romanovski, which after years of studies in US, is back in Russia.
PyEphem and GNU Radio are on our wish list as well and I hope I'll package it.
If someone is interesting in packaging GNU/Radio, Trond's spec file is available at http://trondd.fedorapeople.org/spec_files/.
I grabbed it a little while ago. PyEphem shouldn't be hard, either. Depending upon how the rest of this week goes, I might take a crack at it by the end of the week.
Please, don't hesitate to come to our next meeting, so we can discuss what Fedora do for pari.edu.
I appreciate the great attitude! But I will, as a long time Fedora user, also see what PARI can do for Fedora.
I would be willing, for sure, to provide mirror space and bandwidth for an Astronomy spin, although I can't commit right now to a full Fedora mirror (and the bandwidth usage that entails). Got 100Mb/s to the Internet and I2, and 40+TB of disk.
Well, this one I'll have to admit; I _am_ an IRC newbie. Never had the need before to do IRC; guess I have some stuff to learn. Can't be much more difficult than learning how to run a CNews site in 1991 was..... I've always been an e-mail guy, not a chat guy....
astronomy@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Lamar Owen -
Marek Mahut -
Stephen John Smoogen