NEWS
PhD Defense Matthias Schartner
On December 17, 2019, Matthias Schartner successfully defended his PhD thesis on scheduling VLBI observations. John Gipson, Axel Nothnagel, and Johannes Böhm challenged him with difficult questions, but Matthias masterfully answered all. Congratulations!
VLBI discussions with John Gipson
On the occasion of Matthias’ PhD defense, John Gipson from NVI/NASA GSFC visited the Vienna VLBI group. We took the chance to discuss the next steps for the generation of ITRF2020.
Andreas Hellerschmied receives Karl Rinner Award
On October 22, 2019, Andreas Hellerschmied was awarded the Karl Rinner Award by the Austrian Geodetic Kommission (ÖGK) for the publication on VLBI observations to the APOD satellite in the Journal Sensors in 2018. Congratulations, Andi!
Visit of NVI group at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
This week, Matthias Schartner is visiting the VLBI group of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA. The main purpose of this trip to demonstrate and teach how to use VieSched++ and VieVS together to generate high-quality VLBI schedules and Monte-Carlo simulations.
Additionally, several other people from USNO and Haystack (MIT) took the chance to discuss scheduling and simulations. USNO is already actively using our software products regularly.
VieVS days – day 3
The third and final day of the VieVS days was devoted to the analysis of VGOS sessions as demonstrated by Markus and the presentation of the VieVS baseband simulator by Jakob. The first VieVS days in our new home – the Freihaus – went very well and will certainly find continuation in 2020.
VieVS days – day 2
The second day of the VieVS days is dedicated to scheduling with VieSched++. Matthias explains the intricacies of scheduling with his easy-to-use software package.
VieVS days – day 1
The first day of your “VieVS days” is almost over.
A big thanks for our international participants from China, Germany, and Spain as well as to our students which took part. Also a big thanks to today’s lecturers Sigrid Böhm, Helene Wolf, and Johannes Böhm.
We had some really interesting exercises and fruitful discussions during the coffee breaks.
The main focus today was on analyzing Geodetic VLBI sessions using our in-house software VieVS.
Above, you can see Sigrid Böhm during the opening talk.
Below, you can see Helene Wolf who is pointing to a nasty outlier while teaching us how to use VieVS for a single session analysis.
Later on, we learned about analyzing VLBI Intensive sessions by Johannes Böhm and about multi-session processing and global solutions by Sigrid Böhm.
The exercise sheets and presentation slides will be uploaded soon to our VieVS-Wiki.
Tomorrow, we will continue with scheduling and simulations by Matthias Schartner using VieSched++ and VieVS.
Visit of WSRT and LOFAR
Today we visited the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRF) and the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) as part of the ADASS2019 conference. Especially LOFAR was very interesting since it is a very innovative new kind of telescope. Although it does not look very fancy, the science which can be done by LOFAR is outstanding. It observes at the largely unexplored low-frequency range from 10- 240 MHz and provides several unique observing capabilities. Tens of gigabytes of data are recorded and processed every second which add up to petabyte of data which has to be transported, correlated and archived.
Below is a picture of the Westerbork array with its 14 telescopes:
Vienna contribution to ADASS2019
For the first time, a member of the Higher Geodesy group in Vienna traveled to the Astronomical Data Analysis and Software System (ADASS) conference. This year, ADASS was hosted by the Netherlands in Groningen. Matthias Schartner presented his new VLBI scheduling software VieSched++. Have a look at the abstract.
EU-VGOS meeting at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn
Matthias (left) and Jakob (right) visited the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn to discuss the current status and future of the EU-VGOS project.