My Leiden Radio Astronomy MSc course lectures

From 2007-2016, I gave the Leiden MSc Radio Astronomy lecture course. The lectures were online for several years after that but inevitably disappeared when I returned to the UK. Those lectures still seem to be in demand, so I have created links to the course given in 2010 (this does not include the practical lectures).

Here are the lectures.

My mum's publications

My mum's publications

The Hunterston brooch: Hunterston brooch pamphlet.

Mayville House: Mayville House

The "biggest" Football teams in Scotland and England.

Introduction Football fans often argue about how "big" their club is compared to others. The implication is that "big" does not always scale with financial wealth or income. Indeed for those clubs that claim a global reach, it also does not correlate with domestic match attendance figures. In Scotland, some interesting claims have recently been made about the global fan-base some clubs enjoy.

Social Media Data In this short post, I use the statistics available from Facebook (FB) and Twitter as a proxy to measure the relative popularity of major football clubs in the UK. In particular, I compare the number of likes and followers for the official Club Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. I present these data in the form of a set of Football league tables in units of kilo-likes and kilo-followers (see below). Given that there are 1.5 Billion FB users in total, the true fan base is likely to be several times greater (~ x5?) than the figures presented here. Hopefully, these data can be used to settle any arguments that still exist about which club is the biggest.

Conclusions As regards the Scottish scene, both the FB and twitter statistics suggests that Glasgow Celtic has by far the largest overall support. The large number of FB page likes and Twitter followers subcribed to the official club social media sources (both a significant fraction of the Scottish population), suggest this fan-base very likely has a substantial global dimension. There is a big gap between Celtic and next "biggest" team in Scotland, Glasgow Rangers. This result is underpinned by both the Facebook and Twitter statistics. There is an even bigger gap (around an order of magnitude) between Celtic & Rangers, and the next "biggest" club - Aberdeen (on the basis of Twitter follower stats) or Hibs (on the basis of FB page likes). It is interesting to note, and unusual, that two of the "biggest" clubs currently play in the second tier of Scottish football (Rangers and Hibs).

The Facebook English Premier league table is also presented below. Even Celtic is dwarfed in terms of social media presence when compared with the largest and most wealthy English Clubs (e.g. Man Utd with 67284 kilo-likes). Indeed, about half of the teams in the English premier league have more FB likes than Celtic. Interestingly, teams that are known to have total incomes well in excess of Celtic but that are usually considered by pundits to be "smaller" clubs, do indeed show less FB likes (e.g. Southampton, Swansea, Norwich etc). Such statistics maybe of use to the Scottish Premier League in concluding more favourable financial terms when negotiating future TV deals, especially so if the "big" teams such as Hibs and Rangers return to the top tier of Scottish football.

Outside of the UK, the biggest clubs in Europe score as follows: Barcelona (89.5M), Real Madrid (86.3M), Bayern Munich (34.0M), Juventus (20.9M), A.C. Milan (24.7M), Borussia Dortmund (13.7M), Paris Saint Germain (22.3M), Inter Milan (5.7M) FB likes.

Mike Garrett.

Scottish Premier League (16-12-2015) 

                      Facebook           Twitter  
                      kilo-likes         kilo-followers
Celtic                  1420                306
Aberdeen                  32                 48
Hearts                    29                 44
St. Johnstone              4                 18
Ross County                4                  3
Hamilton                   3                 11
Inverness CT               6                 17
Partick Thistle            7                 13
Dundee                    11                 21
Motherwell                22                 20
Dundee United             16                 30
Kilmarnock                 7                 14

Scottish Championship Rangers 507 204 Hibs 47 37 ... English Premier League Manchester Utd 67284 Chelsea 44112 Arsenal 34168 Liverpool 26824 Manchester City 20019 Tottenham 7121 Everton 2314 Aston Villa 2196 Newcastle 1801 West Ham 1315 Southampton 1287 Sunderland 1157 Swansea 1088 Leicester 923 Crystal Palace 758 Stoke 648 Norwich 643 West Brom 593 Bournemouth 192 Watford 182

Another hint that the Kepler system KIC8462852‬ is probably not harbouring an advanced alien civilisation.

Introduction

KIC8462852‬ ( Boyajian et al. 2015 ) has created quite some excitement as perhaps the first example of an alien megastructure eclipsing what appears to be a fairly normal, main sequence star. In particular, Wright et al. have suggested that the light curve is consistent with a Dyson “swarm” (see image left for my poor attempt at how that might actually appear).

For the Dyson swarm scenario, the remarkable depth of the obscuration in the light curves of KIC8462852‬ (dips in the stellar luminosity in excess of 20% are observed) suggests a scale of astro-engineering that is best associated with something approaching a Kardashev Type 2 civilisation - in other words, a civilisation with energy requirements of order 400E24 Watts or 400 YW (yottawatt) - i.e. around 14 orders of magnitude greater than the current total energy consumption by our own species on planet Earth).

Waste (leakage) Radio emission form a Type II civilisation

If one assumes that advanced Type II civilisations use radio waves to communicate across their planetary system (and why wouldn't they - radio waves are cheap to generate, diffract around and sometimes through solid structures, are immune to scattering and absorption by dust and are harmless when permeating the local environment of complex biological lifeforms), then it becomes interesting to consider what level of broadband artificial radio emission we might expect from such an advanced civilisation, and whether this can be detected by the current or next generation of radio telescopes. Note that this is a rather different approach from convention SETI radio searches currently underway, since the goal there is to detect artificial narrow-band carrier wave signals that are a clear indicator of intelligent life.

I estimate that our own civilisation (Kardashev Type ~ 0.7 - note that it's a logarithmic scale...) currently emits an equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) of at least 50 MW at frequencies < 2000 MHz. This figure is likely an underestimate, and is based only on the collective output of GSM base stations located around the globe (there are 750000 of these in the USA alone with average output power levels of ~50 Watts). These antennas provide relatively broad coverage, sweeping across the horizon in all directions. I have excluded the billions of handheld devices worn outside in the open air (these deliver average powers of << 1 Watt) and relatively rare but powerful radar systems (the average output of an airport radar system is a few hundred Watts but there are probably only a few hundred systems in the world). Other broad beam transmitters such as satellite communication systems, deep space networks, radio and tv transmitters, ionospheric radar transmitters, power-lines and other likely absorbed indoor radio devices (house-hold wifi routers, laptops etc) are also excluded from this estimate. While almost all of the available radio spectrum from 1-2000 MHz is occupied by various radio communication systems, it should be noted that the GSM base stations are currently limited to a few main operational frequency bands e.g. 930-960 MHz and 1805-1880 MHz.

Level of waste radio emission expected from KIC8462852

In this back-of-an-envelope analysis, we make two assumptions: (i) the waste radio emission generated by a communicating civilisation scales linearly with its total energy consumption and (ii) the radio emission is fairly evenly distributed across the available radio spectrum. Assumption (i) predicts a total isotropic waste radio emission output from a Type 2 civilisation associated with KIC8462852‬ of ~ 50E20 Watts or 2.5E12 Watts/Hz (10-2000 MHz). Since KIC8462852 is located at a distance of ~ 450 pc or ~ 1.4E19 metres, this output translates to a flux density of 0.1 Jansky, a level of output that is readily detectable by most radio telescopes today with integration times of only a few seconds. Note that as a main-sequence star, any natural emission from KIC8462852 is essentially undetectable at these sensitivity levels.

Radio emission observed from KIC8462852 via shallow, existing radio surveys

Relatively shallow radio surveys (e.g. NVSS and WENSS) detect no radio emission at the position of KIC8462852 (see images below: first the WSRT WENNS 326 MHz image, followed by VLA NVSS 1400 MHz image - the green cross hairs indicate the position of the KIC8462852). NVSS reaches 1-sigma r.m.s. noise levels better than 0.0025 Jy i.e. about 40 times better than the 0.1 Jy emission that we might predict from KIC8462852‬. With a resolution of 45 arcseconds, NVSS is unlikely to resolve any radio emission associated with KIC8462852‬, even if this is distributed on scales associated with a space-faring civilisation active within an extended planetary system. Naturally, any conclusions based on this analysis depend crucially on the validity of assumption (i). However, much deeper integrations by the JVLA and LOFAR can place far better limits (x1000) on any broadband radio emission that might be associated with KIC8462852, and are to be greatly encouraged (together with conventional SETI searches too). Finally, it should be noted that the full SKA and other next generation telescopes such as the NG VLA will go 50-100x deeper than current facilities, permitting interesting limits to placed on nearby stellar systems within a few hundred light years from the Sun.

Dual site SKA1 and SKA2 implementations

There has been a lot of nonsense talked about what the dual-site SKA will look like. I thought it was worth setting the record straight. Note that this is my personal view of where we are now - it need not be the view of the SKA Organisation.

Mike Garrett (garrett@astron.nl)

Last Friday the SKA Members met and adopted a dual-site implementation for SKA1 and SKA2.

The SKA1 implementation will use existing (or currently being built) infrastructure at both sites, including the precursor telescopes - MeerKAT in RSA and ASKAP in ANZ. It will also include a low-frequency aperture array (SKA1_LOW). SKA1_Mid will be a dish array incorporating MeerKAT. SKA1_SURVEY will be a dish array equipped with PAFs incorporating ASKAP.

So SKA1 is comprised of the following elements and will be located at these sites:

SKA1_Mid (RSA),
SKA1_LOW (ANZ),
SKA1_SURVEY (ANZ)

This split makes excellent use of the current infrastructure at both sites (e.g. network, power provision etc) and the precursors MeerKAT and ASKAP. It also enhances the science case of SKA1 (see memo 125) better addressing the main phase 1 themes: HI near and far + fundamental physics (pulsar timing/surveys).

SKA2 is comprised of the following elements and will be located at these sites:

SKA2_LOW (ANZ),
SKA2_Mid (RSA),
SKA2_AA (RSA)

Comments:

Since MeerKAT is very close to the original SKA1_Mid specification, adding MeerKAT to SKA1_Mid only requires 180 SKA1 spec dishes to be constructed. This permits 60 dishes to be added to ASKAP (the baseline SKA1 called for a 240 dish array). Note also that for SKA1 we are not talking about a simple extension of MeerKAT or ASKAP - we are talking about the incorporation of these telescopes within SKA1 - SKA1 will have a higher spec dish design common to both sites. SKA1_LOW will not incorporate the MWA as the scales and technologies are quite different. Some of the MWA (non-telescope) infrastructure may however be relevant.

The major additional cost differential between the baseline SKA1 and SKA1 as now envisaged is in the form of 60+ PAFs required for SKA1_SURVEY. N.B. the adoption of PAFs as part of the Adv. Instrumentation Programme (AIP) on SKA1 still needs to be ratified via current ASKAP and WSRT-APERTIF demonstrators within the context of the SKA engineering process. A decision on PAF readiness is expected to be made in 2014.

The dual site SKA implementation takes into account the characteristics and advantages of the sites - as detailed in the SSAC report. The SOWG relied heavily on the work conducted by the SSAC and their report.

There are many uninformed comments about the doubling of costs via a dual site implementation - this is not the case - all the SKA1 and SKA2 components have their own independent cores where most of the antennas are located - duplication only becomes apparent on the longer baselines - not an issue for SKA1 and a smaller issue than expected for SKA2 via ANZ & RSA cost predictors. Power is the dominant operational cost.

Some handy figures to know - SKA1_LOW is ~ 5 x LOFAR (A/T) but has a different freq range. MeerKAT has an A/T of 260; SKA1_Mid has an A/T ~1000 - MeerKAT has more aggressive front-end cooling than that currently proposed for SKA1_Mid. ASKAP has an A/T of ~ 65, SKA1_Survey ~ three times ASKAP A/T - ASKAP PAFs may be upgraded, if project costs allow.

SKA2_LOW and SKA2_Mid might be expected to build out from their SKA1 precursors (though the scale is so different this need not be the case). SKA2_AA is a dense aperture array (survey instrument) operating at mid-frequencies < 1500 MHz. It is likely to form a substantial component of Phase 2 but also has its own AIP demonstration process to go through w.r.t engineering readiness a la PAFs in SKA1.

Abbreviations

RSA=Rep. of South Africa
ANZ=Australia/New Zealand
AIP = Adv. Instrumentation Programme

References

SKA Site Advisory Committee (SSAC) Report

SKA Board of Directors Commentary on the SSAC Report

SKA Siting Options Working Group (SOWG) Report

What we do - Rangers F.C.

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