PARTNeR: Radio astromony for students
C. Blasco, J. A. Vaquerizo · 2008
PARTNeR1 stands for Proyecto Academico con el Radiotelescopio de NASA en Robledo (the Academic Project with NASA’s radio telescope at Robledo), and allows students to perform radio astronomy observations. High school and university students can access the PARTNeR radio telescope via the internet. The students can operate the antenna from their own school or university and perform radio astronomy observations. What is PARTNeR? The acronym PARTNeR stands for Proyecto Academico con el Radiotelescopio de NASA en Robledo (the Academic Project with NASA’s radio telescope at Robledo). NASA has three satellite tracking stations across the world: CDSCC (Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex), Australia. • GDSCC (Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex), USA. • MDSCC • 2 (Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex), Spain. One of the 34-m antennas located at MDSCC2 (see Figure 1) is no longer used for satellite tracking and, thanks to an agreement between the Spanish space agency (INTA, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial) and the American space agency (NASA), students can use it to perform radio astronomy observations. Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid and Fundacion Espanola para la Ciencia y la Tecnologia (FECYT) are also PARTNeR sponsors. Activities offered by PARTNeR: radio astronomy observations High school and university students can access the PARTNeR radio telescope via the internet. The students can operate the antenna from their own school or university and perform radio astronomy observations. There are two scientific projects they can join: X-ray binary monitoring. An X-ray binary consists of a compact object (black hole or neu• tron star) and a “normal” star, swallowed by the compact object. Some of these systems show radio bursts and their study can give us information about the black hole/neutron star, accretion rate, etc. In Figure 2, components of a low mass X-ray binary are shown. 1 http://www.laeff.inta.es/partner 2 http://www.mdscc.org 3 http://www.centrodevisitantes.com