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Centre for Advanced Instrumentation

Postgraduate Training

INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED INSTRUMENTATION

 


Course Organiser – Dr Richard Wilson

 

COURSE OVERVIEW

 

The Advanced Instrumentation Postgraduate Lecture course comprises a broad range of lecture/workshop modules, each of approx five hours, given by academic and research staff. These have been chosen to cover a selection of astronomy and instrumentation research undertaken in Durham. Initially in the Michaelmas term there will be practically orientated research-skill workshops, including (amongst others) statistics, programming, data reduction, and high-performance computing. Problems and exercises are set within blocks of lectures and are part of the overall assessment for the first year of postgraduate studies.

The lecture course starts with the introductory lecture at 3.00p.m. on Monday 8th October in Room OC304. Unless otherwise stated the lectures in Michaelmas term, in common with the Astronomy course (A), will take place in Room OC304 at 9am, while the instrumentation lectures in the Epiphany term will take place at 10am in room 253.

Lecture notes and other course material can be found on DUO: Postgraduate courses in Physics > Course Documents > Astronomy

Note that complementary courses are also run by the Information Technology Service (ITS). These are not part of the postgraduate course but can give useful background and experience of, for example, programming in Fortran and writing papers and reports in LaTEX. See https://apps.dur.ac.uk/tcbs/ and the Information Technology Service link for the dates and details of the ITS training courses.

 Downloadable lecture course calendar with room and time details (astronomy lectures): Calendar (pdf file)

Downloadable lecture course calendar with room and time details (Instrumentation lectures, Epiphany Term): TBD


 

LECTURE COURSES

 

Michaelmas Term 2012

Welcome to Durham astronomy (A)                                      Prof C. S. Frenk

The Role of a Post-graduate student (1 lecture) (A)             Prof D. M. Alexander


Research Tools in Astronomy  (A)                              Mr A. P. Lotts; Dr J. R. Lucey; Dr A. M. Swinbank; Prof S. M. Cole

(7 hours)

Statistics in Astronomy Workshop (A)  Prof R. G. Bower

       (8 lectures)


Programming in IDL (room Ph140) (A)                                  Dr J. R. Mullaney

        (7 hrs)

  

 

Astronomical Instrumentation                                          Dr P. M. Chadwick; Dr  A. G. Basden; Dr J. Schmoll; Dr T.J. Morris

       (6 lectures)

                                                                                                                                                                          

Data Reduction Workshops or Fortran/HPC Workshops    Dr A.M. Swinbank; Dr T Theuns

      (10 hours)


                                                                                                                          

Epiphany Term 2013

 

Further Research Tools in Astronomy (2 hrs):

        Scientific writing skills Prof D. M. Alexander

 

Further Research Tools in Astronomy (2 hrs)                                   Dr P. Norberg;  Prof D. M. Alexander

        Critical assessment of scientific results 

 

Good Practise in Software Engineering (I)                                        Dr. C.D. Saunter

            (5 lectures, 15/1, 17/1, 18/1, 21/1, 22/2)      


Optical Engineering (I)                                                                          Dr. S. Rolt

            (5 lectures, 24/1, 25/1, 28/1, 31/1, 4/2)

 

Optical Design with Zemax (I) Prof. R. Sharples

            (5 lectures, 5/2, 7/2, 8/2, 11/2, 12/2)

 

                                                                                                                       

Precision Optics Manufacture (I)                                                         Prof. D. Robertson

            (2 extended lectures / lab demonstrations at NetPark, 14/2, 18/2)

 

Programme Management & Systems Engineering (I)                     Mr. G. Talbot

            (5 lectures, 19/2, 22/2, 25/2, 26/2, 1/3)

 

  

COURSE ASSESSMENT

Each block of the course will be assessed via course work. This will involve ~3 hours of effort for each of the five instrumentation courses in the second term. The research-skill based coursework in the first term is expected to be more involved and will typically take more than 3 hours of effort.

Each student is also required to write a 2500 word research critique/essay and give a 15 minute presentation on it towards the end of the Epiphany term.  The topics for these will be decided by your supervisors.  Finally, towards the end of the Easter term each student is required to write a 5000 word research report on which they are tested with a viva examination.

IMPORTANT NOTE: progression into the 2nd year of study is dependent on performance in the 1st year. It is a requirement of each astronomy student to attend all lectures and complete all course work, the 2500 word research critique and presentation, and successfully complete the first year 5000 word research report and viva.

 

FRIDAY-LUNCHTIME TALKS

There will be Astronomy talks held on Friday lunchtimes at 1.10pm in OC218, and Instrumentation talks on alternate Wednesdays during term time, see: https://www.dur.ac.uk/cfai/seminars/. As a purely informal, but useful exercise, each of the 1st year students will be called upon to give a presentation on their research in the latter half of their first year.