WVU Astronomy / Engineering and The Green Bank Observatory Richard Prestage Scientist, NRAO

The Advantage of Unblocked Optics Dynamic Range Near sidelobes reduced by a factor >10 from conventional antennas Gain & Sensitivity The 100 meter diameter GBT performs better than a 120 meter conventional antenna Reduced Interference Characteristics of the GBT Large Collecting Area Sensitive to Low Surface Brightness Sky Coverage & Tracking (>85%) Angular Resolution Frequency Coverage Radio Quiet Zone Unblocked Aperture state-of-art receivers & detectors modern control software flexible scheduling The Green Bank Telescope

NRAO Mission Statement The National Radio Astronomy Observatory enables forefront research into the Universe at radio wavelengths. In partnership with the scientific community, we: ● provide world leading telescopes, instrumentation and expertise, ● train the next generation of scientists and engineers, and ● promote astronomy to foster a more scientifically literate society. Our collaborations with WVU address all of these!

Observing with the GBT Lorimer: ● 113 proposals 2005 – date: ● “Shapiro delay measurement in a double neutron star binary” ● “Confirmation of extragalactic pulses from M31” McLaughlin: ● 147 poposals 2006 – date: ● “Timing solutions for RRATs” ● “Characterizing the Eclipsing Properties of a Fermi MSP” ● “Confirmation Observations of New Pulsars Discovered by the PSC”

Computer Science and DSP “Detection of Dispersed Radio Pulses: A machine learning approach to candidate identification and classification” ● Thomas Devine, Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova, Maura McLaughlin “Blind detection of astrophysical pulses in the spatial Fourier transform domain” ● Natalia Schmid and Richard Prestage

Phased Array Feed Beamformer

Education and Public Outreach ● NSF RET proposal (submitted) ● Astronomy undergraduate research projects ● Engineering undergraduate senior design projects ● More….