3/3/2019 The Lives and Deaths of Pulsars

"Consider Again that Periodically Rotating Dot. That's a Pulsar. and its slowing down."

We know that Pulsars (Rotating Neutron Stars) are Rotating Periodically on their Rotational Axis while emitting an intense beam of Electromagnetic Radiation along its magnetic Axis. This beam actually Sweeps out a cone like shape in space and if planet Earth (or any sentient beings with decent radar technology) happen to be in the way of this beam, then the Pulsar will be detectable as a repeating signal.

This rapid rotation actually slows down over time.

Pulsar P - Pdot diagram

Lets understand this diagram

The diagram is plotted by horizontal Rotation Period (P) axis against vertical Period Derivative (dp/dt) axis

Period (P): time taken to spin once
Period derivative (Pdot): instantaneous rate of change of P, basically variability of much the Pulsar is slow down.

Pulsars exist on this diagram. Pulsars of Different Ages and type/ Signature populate the diagram and as they age and slow down they move from the top left (small P and high Pdot) into the lower right hand corner (large P, low Pdot) of the mapping.

Young Pulsars spin really fast taking less time to complete a revolution and have a high rate of change of that Period. Old Pulsars spin Slowly and take a long time to alter the total time to make a complete spin.

They're like old men who can't seem to switch it up on the dance floor and move like before. So after a while, they just stifle up, shut off and die. So the trick to staying young is always keep moving.

And there's a line there called a Death Line where the Pulsar is too slow (Large Period) to generate that signature Electromagnetic beam that makes it detectable from Earth and eventually they too will shut off, ending the Pulsars life as a Radio Source, resulting in one less lighthouse in the Cosmos.

The generation of the EM beam is also tied to the strength of magnetic field (B). Low B equals no Beam.

The Pulsar inside the Heart of the Crab Nebula of 1054 is pretty young.

The P -Pdot diagram is sort of like a HR Diagram but for the lives of Pulsars. Detailing their ages until their final fates

But there is a twist, one that involves a bit of Stellar Vampirism.

How Pulsars may be born again Shining and Fast (Really, really Fast)

(That was a Fury Road reference btw)

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