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School of Astronomy (established
2007)
Astronomy
is the study of the universe beyond the Earth's atmosphere. It
is a science driven by observations, with links to mathematics,
physics, chemistry, computer science, geophysics, material
science and biology. Astronomy is important for society and
culture, and helps attract young people to the physical
sciences. The field benefits from and also drives advances in
technology.
To address the
special needs of this branch of science, the school of astronomy
was establsihed early 2007 to creat an environment to facilitate
the growth of observational astronomy and cosmology.
Astronomy
in Iran
There is hardly any coherent astronomy research activity in any
institute across the country. The observational astronomy is
currently carried out in Solar Physics, Cosmic Ray, Variable
stars but attracts no attention from the international
community. While few individuals collaborate with distinguished
scientists around the world, none of the research groups have
been playing a visible role in the international astronomy
projects.
Unfortunately the
Iranian’s perception of astronomy has been dramatically shifted
to theoretical astrophysics, cosmology and gravitation and it
now requires years to “make case” for observational projects.
School
Strategy plan
Our
aim is to play a prominent role in astronomy research both
within Iran and internationally. It will certainly be impossible
to master all the above topics given the absence of world class
resources or facilities. Given the present expertise and
resources available to world astronomy and within IPM,
Extra-galactic astronomy is the one which will likely to
form the core research area with a nascent activity in the areas
such as extra-solar planets. This is both because of the general
interest in galaxies and structure formation and also due to the
availability of the archival data and large area surveys.
Under
the general title of the extra-galactic astronomy, the focus
will be on formation and evolution of galaxies, through
structural studies or star formation indicators,
galaxy-environment-IGM connection, AGN activities and feedback,
mass mapping (strong, weak lensing and X-ray) of galaxy systems
and galaxy halos involving observational and numerical studies.
Our
approach involves multi-wavelength observations across the
spectrum from radio to X-ray, of systems ranging from dwarf
galaxies to galaxy clusters, with a special interest in the
application of novel analysis techniques to get the most out of
our data. This broad sweep enables us, for example, to study
scaling properties across a wide mass range, and environmental
influences on galaxies across a great variety of environments.
Members of the group should work closely together, bringing
together skills and interests in a variety of combinations, and
part-time researchers will be encouraged to work with full-time
members on the set topics.
Phase
I (2008-2010)
involves research in
Fossil Galaxy Systems, Nearby Early-type Galaxies and Weak
Lensing. In this phase the team will use the current contacts
and links of team members to demonstrate capabilities in data
reduction and analysis to other collaborators in Europe and the
US.
This will provide
the opportunity for interested full-time and part-time members
to learn astronomical data reduction and analysis mostly in
visible regime. The team should try to present itself and prove
to be a reliable partner in consortiums and collaborations.
Theoretical and numerical studies with implications in team’s
observational activities will be encouraged, however, the bulk
of the team should be engaged with observational data.
The time-scale for
this phase is 1 to 2 years. This may vary depending on the
availability of the following requirements and resources.
This phase includes
training research students (PhD, MSc thesis) who will join
half-way through the program. Regular schools and workshops will
be organised to help achieve the aims in capacity building.
Phase
II (2010-2012)
involves mastering
the data reduction and exploring observation ideas based on the
outcomes of the research in phase I and ideas from collaborators
as well as the teams own initiatives. The research in
extra-galactic astronomy will expand to other wavelengths, Radio
and X-ray, intermediate redshifts or deep universe. Depending on
possibility of hiring one more full-time member the extrasolar
plant science can also start to form. It is hoped that at this
stage the number of full-time staff has increased to 4.
At this stage the
team must have established stable links with other collaborators
and start putting observation ideas forward to small to medium
size telescopes as PI and collaborate with other institutions on
larger telescope observing runs. The team should make
preparations to use the data from planned or underway ground and
space missions, if they reach data production. This phase should
achieve its objectives in 2-3 years.
In Phase III
(2012-2014) the team can propose observations, fully reduce
data and develop scripts and codes or pipelines. Also should be
able to come up with experiments and survey proposals. At this
stage the team has established itself to be recognized
internationally and should review further expansion both in
research topics and resources.
Other activates
Iranian
National Observatory Project
School of Astronomy
is a consultant in the Iranian National Observatory (INO)
project. The project manager, the project scientist and the
project engineer are school members. The project manager,
manages the overall project. The project scientist and the
project engineer mange the science and engineering teams,
respectively.
Technology
Development Devision (TDD)
This
division is established to function in the following areas:
A)
Study and design instrumentation for the INO and other
telescopes
B)
Design and build utility hardware and tools for the INO
project
C)
Study and design software for telescope operation and
scheduling
D)
Study and design software for data acquisition, transfer,
storage, preview, reduction and arching
E)
Simulation of telescope operation
Current
projects underway in this division include:
1)
Design and manufacturing a spectrophotometer for Tabriz
Univ. Observatory
2)
Study and design of a remote control all sky (cloud)
camera for INO site monitoring
3)
Study focal reducer as a key instrument for the INO 3m telescope
Data
Reduction and Management System
A Weak Lensing
Pipeline on the computer cluster of the INO300 Project, BAHMAN,
was set up which consist of the following four main modules:
- Reduction of
Deep Optical Multi-Band Data taken by Wide Field Imagers
-
Photometric Redshift Estimation
- Cluster Search
Algorithm
- Weak Lensing
Mass Reconstruction
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