1/3/2019 Had my first Space class today. I guess that makes me an Astronomer in training.

ASTR 800 is a Readings paper course held at AUT for postgraduate students looking to do a Mathematical Science Postgraduate Degree related to Astronomy field.

The class is being taught by Dr. Willem van Straten of the IRASR.

Dr. Willem van Straten

We will have to do a lit review on various topics in Astronomy. Hopefully to get a guideline of what we will do in our research methodologies paper.

Some takeaways from today:

The Lives of Stars

"Whats the similarity between Ogres, Onions and Stars? They all have layers"

The Class Started with some basics of Stellar Evolution. The idea is that Stars end up as either 1 of 3 things (Stellar Core Remnants) depending on their mass. White Dwarves, Neutron Stars or Black Holes.

As Stars deplete their fuel they burn different elements until there is nothing left but the iron core.

Our Star the Sun is bound to expand into a Red Giant and then shed off its layers into a white Dwarf star which has the mass of the Sun but the volume of planet Earth. After of course it has swallowed up the Earth and the Inner Planets during its Red Giant phase. No one left to sing songs of the Earth by then.

Big Stars Live Fast and Die Hard with a bang as after they undergo core collapse and Explode in Supernova event they either turn into a Neutron Star which is a super dense, super Gravitationally Intense object or a Black Hole which is also Gravitationally Intense.

Pulsars and Pulsar Timing 

"Pulsars are like Lighthouses in the Universe"

We then talked about something that Dr. van Straten was involved with personally, that is the search for Pulsars. Pulsars are rapidly rotating Neutron Stars that have a strong magnetic field. An Electromagnetic Beam is emitted along the Magnetic Axis which not necessarily the same as its Rotational Axis

Pulsars are interesting things because they represent places where Nature may exist in its most Extreme. Their Magnetic Fields definitely represent a key area of study.

Fast Radio Burst

"We are Baryons"

ASTR 800 subject is called "Advanced Topics in Astronomy and Astrophysics" and the subject title is definitely not misleading.

It was the first class and already we were studying something completely new in the field of Astrophysics and something that Dr Willem was involved in which are Fast Radio Bursts.

Strange Signals from Outer Space

Fast Radio Bursts or 'Lorimer Bursts' as they were initially known, were discovered about 20 years ago. They very brief and intense flashes (Saturated the Receiver) of electromagnetic energy emanating from Extra-galactic Sources (Places outside the Milky Way).

Those sources could range from hypothetical Magnetars or copious other violent phenomena in the Universe, perhaps even extraterrestrial technology...

Why should we hunt for FRB signals? Because it may give us insight into the Interstellar Medium (ISM) and Intergalactic Medium (IGM).

If we can know more about the ISM and IGM then we can know more about the the density/ distribtion of stuff in the Universe. By doing survey survey of all the mass in the Universe, we can understand more about Baryonic Matter. (We are made of Baryons btw) and if we can know more about Baryonic matter then we could perhaps build a better model to fit Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and if we can build a suitable model to understand DM/DE we could perhaps unlock some new physical laws down the line.

27/2/2019 Crashed a an Undergraduate Astronomy Class

Crashed an ASTR 500 Introduction to Astronomy. On my path to become a radio Astronomer I am fretted by the fact that I dont have a formal Astronomy background. My understanding of Astronomy is limited to reading popular science books like A Brief History of the Universe by J.P. McEvoy, + Lucky Planet by David Waltham, TIME: New Frontiers of Space, Our Cosmic Origins by Armand Delsemme. Also shout out to Nikos Prantzos who wrote our Cosmic Future.

Armand Delsemme studied Comets which gives him insight to talk about how Life Arose on Planet Earth.

These Books, although fun and insightful count little in the way of a formal education in Astronomy.

My Background is in Electronics Engineering Majoring in Microwave Communications, and with 2 

years grappling with some data processing (python) and web technologies(NodeJS and Express Framework).

So, on my way down from WS Science building I saw a notice on the screen that lists all ongoing lectures. It showed ASTR 500 Introduction to Astronomy was just about to start.

I went in as the class was starting and placed myself in the back, hopefully out of notice of the professor.

The class was taught by Dr. Jordan Alexander of the IRASR Institute. We were asked to Introduce ourselves. Here's what I said:

"Hi, my name is Afiq and I'm an engineer. I read Carl Sagan's Cosmos once I thought that was cool..."

And then we were off on our journey...

Hand Gestures FTW

Kicking it with the youngins

We had an exercise where we shrank the radius of the Earth down to 1 meter. Then marked the position of some things:

• Deepest Ocean Trench
• Height of Sky Scraper
• Tallest Mountains
• Low Earth Orbit/ ISS Operating height.

Also, I learned how to find shit in the Universe: Right Ascension and Declination.

Many of my follow up blogs will probably involve some things I learn from ASTR 500

26/2/2019 My Schedule this Semester at AUT:

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Auckland University of Technology Masters (MSC) in Research Program is 2 years with first year being subjects and 2nd year being thesis year.

First Year is divided into 2 Semesters. First Semester Subjects 4 subjects lasting until July 2019 and and 2nd year also 4 subjects lasting until November of 2019.

According to Dr. Alna van der Merwe (Super Nice Woman) who is the Program Coordinator the program should play out something like this:

Semester 1:

• COMP 805 Data Mining and Machine Learning:
  
  How to Automate Decision Making. I have experience in Web Scraping.
  
• STAT 805 Computational Mathematics and Statistics:
  
  Every Scientist (I like to call us explorers of the unknown) must have a fine grasp on Statistics. Introduction to R. R is a programming Language for Statistical Computing commonly used by data miners for big data analysis.
  
• MATH 803 Mathematical Modelling and Simulation
  
  Investigates mathematical methods for building models suitable for problems in naturalsciences, engineering and social sciences. Mathematical software packages and computing algorithms are used to analyse and simulate mathematical models. This paper will be taught using SAS software or equivalent.
  
• ASTR 800 Advanced Topics in Astronomy
  
  Taught by the Institute. Working with an Institute Member. Perhaps I will be involved in finding out ways of identifying amd removing RFI (Radio Frequency Interfrence) or perhaps I will be building a data pipeline. Maybe study Pulsars or the Interstellar Medium?
  
  What is a Pulsar?
  
  Pulsars are a small type of Star discovered by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish, made of lots of neutrons that are packed very closely together after a star has died
  
  They spin periodically (while slowing down) in an intense magnetic field  while emitting beams of RF Energy which are detectable from Earth.
  
  Comes in many different flavours (X Ray, Gamma, Optical)
  
  

Semester 2:

• COMP 810 Data Warehousing: SQL
• COMP 811 Research Methods (Write an mini Astro Paper)
• ??? 
• ???

Question Marks are Electives of which i'm gravitating towards STAT  802 Geocomputation and COMP 815 Nature Inspired Computing.

Nature Inspired Computing will involved Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks. I'm the kind of guy who enjoys nature hikes. I have a friend who once told me that "Just because you enjoy video games, doesn't mean you will enjoy making video games"

But here's the catch. Dr. Alna Recommended that perhaps I change MATH 803 for a course on Digital Signals Processing designate ENSE 807 with Matlab

So Maybe the Semester will look like this:

• COMP 809 Data Mining and Machine Learning
• STAT 805 Computational Math and Statistics
• ASTR 800 Advanced Topics in Astronomy
• ENSE 807 Digital Signal Processing

I have until Friday 1st of March to Decide

25/2/2019 First Day at AUT

I'm on this path in life and I want to be an Astronomer because I think its the coolest Job in the Universe.

Today was my first day at Auckland University of Technology under their 2 year 240 pts Masters in Research Program Astronomy Course.

The Course will put me under the Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research (IRASR) which is a pretty small team the Office of Which id located in the International Students Center office next to the AUT Law Building.

Front Door of the Institute

Today I met with some Key members of the Institute, Including.

• Professor Gulyaev: He's the Boss. The Big Boss. Like Korolev, and Stalin. combined.
• Dr.  Willem Van Straten. He's doing Research on Pulsars and Pulsar Timing Arrays. Does work on Fast Radio Bursts Too. which is one of the key mysteries in Astronomy today.
• Mr. Tim Natusch
• Mdm Patricia Sallis: Institute Administrator 
• Natalia (Nat) from Ukraine. An Associate Researcher

Can't lie i felt kind of intimidated with the the meetup. I've waited a long time to get a chance at being an Astronomer and these are real Astronomers, cut of the same creed and cult as legendary people such as Carl Sagan, George Gamow and Edwin Hubble.

I am to be one among them. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

I've been given Homework to study these papers:

• SPINN: Straightforward Machine Learning Solution towards Pulsar Candidate Selection Problem

• Towards Deeper Neural Networks Towards Fast Radio Burst Detection (FRB)
  
  Fast Radio Bursts are Sudden Signals that Appear to originate from Extragalactic Sources. Investigating FRBs may enable us to unlock the mysteries of the Interstellar Medium (The Space Between Stars) and the IGM (The Space Between Galaxies)

A flash in the pan, a whisper in the Cosmic scan, then Nothing. 

So I work in software now...

60 years of the Space Age x python = Scraping the Space Age

And being in software I do a lot of programming. Recently I made a python script using Requests and BeautifulSoup modules to scrape information about the Space Age from Wikipedia.

So that when I write the podcast I have a general idea what to write about.

Two birds with one stone. One hand I boost my python skills for work, on the other hand I support the development of  60 years of the Space Age podcast project that I do on YouTube.

This is the example HTML that I get.

Timeline of Space Exploration

 Timeline of Artificial Satellites and Space Probes

Timeline of the Space Race

The python script can be found on github: 

https://github.com/coderXmachina/scrappingTheSpaceAge

Latest Dispatch from Beyond the Stars. 60 Years of the Space Age part 9: The First Explorers

60 years of the Spacee Age Part 2 Werner Von Braun Escape from Vengeance

Watch the Episode on YouTube here:

This episode Explores Werner Von Brauns Rise escape Nazism and the legacy of the V2 into the American Space Program.

***

Welcome back to 60 years of the Space Race, an ongoing internet video series exploring the history of the human presence in outer space in Commemoration of the 60 year anniversary of the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Make sure to check out the last episode where we talked about chief Russian Rocket Engineer Sergei Korolev.

If Sergei Korolev was a shadow shrouded in mystery then his counterpart on the opposite side of the battlefields of World War 2: The German Werhner Von Braun was a giant covered in controversy.

***

Born in 1912 into Prussian (East German) aristocracy his family moved to Berlin after their original homeland was ceded to Poland due to the peace treaties of WW1.

            The 2^nd of 3 sons Werner Von Braun was immensely fascinated by Science Fiction, taking Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon as inspiration to shape his interest in space exploration.

***

            Today we see rockets simply as machines used to get people and things into space but a century ago they were inventions undreamt of in any other era before. Rockets were seen as devices of immensely untapped potential and the young Von Braun among others were captivated by the “romance of the open sky” that they portrayed, although the darker side of such technologies had yet to have been revealed.

            He became a member of The German Society for Space Travel: “Der Verein fur Raumschiffart”, where Von Braun and other visionaries like Willy Ley and Hermann Oberth lay the ground work in launching early rockets of the liquid fuel type. They were mostly scientists and engineers “technical people” gathered together to test some new technology known in German as the Rakete but at the heart of the Society were passionate enthusiasts driven to work towards a common goal:

The popularization of rockets and their possible use in space travel. An idea still years ahead of its time…

***

            But for the Vfr their time had come. When the Nazi’s came to power they pretty much shut all civilian rocket societies. Such technologies they deemed a Military priority instead.

            Regardless, Von Braun and his close knit team of scientists persisted with their work. Getting in bed with the Nazi’s as a source of funding during the lead up to World War 2.

            Von Braun was given an opportunity to build rockets for the German Army due to a loop hole in the Treaty of Versailles that did not specify rockets under the list of banned weapons.

***

            The world’s first long range missiles were built by Von Braun and his team under the supervision of General Dr. Walter Dornburger who was also a man equally swept up by the dream of exploring space despite his military background as an artillery officer. Don’t let the title of General deceive you. There’s a Dr. in there too.

            Just like Korolev for a time it seemed like the sky was the limit and the team rode their dreams of rocketry to horizons never before seen by humanity.

***

            Off the coast of the Baltic Sea at Peenumunde Army Research Center Von Braun and his team would build the world’s first functional (not like my adulthood) liquid fuelled rocket, marking the seaside town of Peenumunde as the birthplace of modern rocket science.

Liquid fuel rockets generally give you more bang for your buck and allow you to control the flow of fuel that is burned to produced thrust. Controlling this reaction and guiding the rocket to where it needs to go is pretty much the essence of rocket science. And the Peenumunde team did this with startling success with their prototype The A – 4.

***

            

            Now this is when the mists of history began to condense.

            Von Brauns rocket project belonged to the army at first; The German Heer. But as the Nazi regime consolidated power in the buildup to World War 2 Von Braun was advised into joining the SS; the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. 

They were a group of ruthless thugs in jackboots sworn loyalty unto death to Adolf Hitler. The relationship of Von Braun and the Nazi party is difficult to understand. On one hand you see a brilliant man fulfilling his patriotic duty to his homeland while also pursuing his scientific ambitions, there’s nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand: the Nazi’s did some fucked up shit.

***

As the war dragged on, the SS made moves to dig its fingers into the rocket program and Adolf Hitler seeking any desperate measure possible to turn the tide christened the A – 4 as the V-2; “Der Vergeltungswaffe 2” “Vengenace Weapon 2”.

Since Nazi Germany could not win the war in the traditional sense on the battlefield Hitler sought a game changer in the form a “wunderfaffe” a never before seen super weapon, the V-2 was one such weapon; the world’s first ever intercontinental guided missile.

The vengeance weapons were built in a secret underground facility called Mittelwerke near the city of Norhausen using slave labour from the Buchenwald concentration camp. The prisoners were put to work at gunpoint in the worst possible conditions imaginable. Thousands of the rocket factory workers died from execution, starvation and disease.

Reminds you a little of Sergei Korolev’s story except this time the boot was on the rocket makers foot.

It is ironic then, that the instruments of humanity’s planetary liberation were built under conditions of enslavement.

***

As a bystander to all of it was Wernher Von Braun who really could not do anything about it.

He had dreamed of using rockets for space travel not for killing people. Upon hearing news of the first casualties from London due to the V – 2 in 1944 Von Braun was quoted to have said: “the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet.” Most people to have known von Braun accorded him as a good man, an honorable man that was put down a dark path because of the time period he lived in.

As the death throes of the Nazi regime begin in earnest in 1944 von Braun who at the time held the rank of sturmbannführer or Major was arrested and questioned for his loyalty for having dared suggested that the rockets be used for space travel after the war and not for the mass murder of civilians. Suffice to say that the V – 2 rocket program could not proceed without him and with help from General Dornburger, he was dropped of charges and put back to work.

            Seeing the imminent defeat of the Nazi Regime von Braun had to think of the future of his work. As British, Soviet and American teams swept through the devastated German heartland in search of anything they could find on the V -2 the scientists had to choose a captor among the soon to be victorious Allies. But not just that, the Nazi’s were beginning to shoot their own people that would not fight to the death in the losing war.

            Der Krieg truly was verloren

 ***

            It was time to leave Germany. As the entire country crumbled around them the rocket scientists staged a daring escape using forged documents and simple subterfuge to bypass SS guards travelling across the country and into the custody of the 324^th infantry Regiment of the US army.

            It would be a new phase of life for Wernher Von Braun, one that would climax with an American walking on the moon.

***

            This has been 60 years of the Space Age an ongoing internet series chronicling the journey mankind into space in commemoration of the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next episode.