Solar and Heliospheric Physics with the Square Kilometre Array

The fields of solar radiophysics and solar system radio physics, or radio heliophysics, will benefit immensely from an instrument with the capabilities projected for SKA. Potential applications include interplanetary scintillation (IPS), radio-burst tracking, and solar spectral radio imaging with a superior sensitivity. These will provide breakthrough new insights and results in topics of fundamental importance, such as the physics of impulsive energy releases, magnetohydrodynamic oscillations and turbulence, the dynamics of post-eruptive processes, energetic particle acceleration, the structure of the solar wind and the development and evolution of solar wind transients at distances up to and beyond the orbit of the Earth. The combination of the high spectral, time and spatial resolution and the unprecedented sensitivity of the SKA will radically advance our understanding of basic physical processes operating in solar and heliospheric plasmas and provide a solid foundation for the forecasting of space weather events.Comment: 15 pages, Proceedings of Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array (AASKA14). 9 -13 June, 2014. Giardini Naxos, Italy. Online at http://pos.sissa.it/cgi-bin/reader/conf.cgi?confid=215, id.16

Portuguese SKA white book

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Radio astronomy and Space science in Azores: enhancing the Atlantic VLBI infrastructure cluster

Radio astronomy and Space Infrastructures in the Azores have a great scientific and industrial interest because they benefit from a unique geographical location in the middle of the North Atlantic allowing a vast improvement in the sky coverage. This fact obviously has a very high added value for: i) the establishment of space tracking and communications networks for the emergent global small satellite fleets ii) it is invaluable to connect the radio astronomy infrastructure networks in Africa, Europe and America continents using Very Large Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) techniques, iii) it allows excellent potential for monitoring space debris and Near Earth Objects (NEOs). There is in S. Miguel island a 32-metre SATCOM antenna that could be integrated in advanced VLBI networks and be capable of additional Deep Space Network ground support. This paper explores the space science opportunities offered by the upgrade of the S. Miguel 32-metre SATCOM antenna into a world-class infrastructure for radio astronomy and space exploration: it would enable a Deep Space Network mode and would constitute a key space facility for data production, promoting local digital infrastructure investments and the testing of cutting-edge information technologies. Its Atlantic location also enables improvements in angular resolution, provides many baseline in East-West and North-South directions connecting the emergent VLBI stations in America to Europe and Africa VLBI arrays therefore contributing for greater array imaging capabilities especially for sources or well studied fields close to or below the celestial equator, where ESO facilities, ALMA, SKA and its precursors do or will operate and observe in the coming decades.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for Publication at Advances in Space Research, COSPAR, Elsevie

Monitoring the performance of the SKA CICD infrastructure

The selected solution for monitoring the SKA CICD (continuous integration and continuous deployment) Infrastructure is Prometheus and Grafana. Starting from a study on the modifiability aspects of it, the Grafana project emerged as an important tool for displaying data in order to make specific reasoning and debugging of particular aspect of the infrastructure in place. Its plugin architecture easily allow to add new data sources like prometheus and the TANGO-controls framework related data sources has been added as well. The main concept of grafana is the dashboard, which enable to create real analysis. In this paper the monitoring platform is presented which take advantage of different datasources and a variety of different panels (widget) for reasoning on archiving data, monitoring data, state of the system and general health of it

CI-CD practices at SKA

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an international effort to build two radio interferometers in South Africa and Australia forming one Observatory monitored and controlled from global headquarters (GHQ) based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank. SKA is highly focused on adopting CI/CD practices for its software development. CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration & Delivery and/or Deployment. This paper analyses the CI/CD practices selected by the Systems Team (a specialised agile team devoted to developing and maintaining the tools that allow continuous practices) in relation to a specific software system of the SKA telescope, i.e. the Local Monitoring and Control (LMC) of the Central Signal Processor (CSP), from now on called CSP.LMC. CSP is the SKA element with the aim to process the data coming from the receivers in order to be used for scientific analysis. To achieve this, it is composed of several instruments, called subsystems, such as the Correlator Beam Former (CBF), the Pulsar Search (PSS) and the Pulsar Timing (PST). CSP.LMC communicates to the Telescope Manager (the software front-end to control the telescope operations) all the required information to monitor the CSP's subsystems and the interface to configure them and send the commands needed to perform an observation. In other words, CSP.LMC permits the TM to monitor and control CSP as a single entity

PASO -- Astronomy and Space Situational Awareness in a Dark Sky Destination

The Pampilhosa da Serra Space Observatory (PASO) is located in the center of the continental Portuguese territory, in the heart of a certified Dark Sky destination by the Starlight Foundation (Aldeias do Xisto) and has been an instrumental asset to advance science, education and astrotourism certifications. PASO hosts astronomy and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) activities including a node of the Portuguese Space Surveillance \& Tracking (SST) infrastructure network, such as a space radar currently in test phase using GEM radiotelescope, a double Wide Field of View Telescope system, a EUSST optical sensor telescope. These instruments allow surveillance of satellite and space debris in LEO, MEO and GEO orbits. The WFOV telescope offers spectroscopy capabilities enabling light curve analysis and cosmic sources monitoring. Instruments for Space Weather are being considered for installation to monitor solar activities and expand the range of SSA services.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, Keywords: Dark Sky, radioastronomy, space, space debris, space situational awareness; Draft from Talk presented at Astronomy and Satellite Constellations: Pathways Forward, IAU Symposium 385, October 2023, Ed. C. Walker, D.Turnshek, P.Grimley, D.Galadi-Enriquez & M.Aub\'e, International Astronomical Union Proceedings Series, Cambridge University Press, 202

SKA telescope manager: a status update

The international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project to build two radio interferometers is approaching the end of its design phase, and gearing up for the beginning of formal construction. A key part of this distributed Observatory is the overall software control system: the Telescope Manager (TM). The two telescopes, a Low frequency dipole array to be located in Western Australia (SKA-Low) and a Mid-frequency dish array to be located in South Africa (SKA-Mid) will be operated as a single Observatory, with its global headquarters (GHQ) based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank. When complete it will be the most powerful radio observatory in the world. The TM software must combine the observatory operations based at the GHQ with the monitor and control operations of each telescope, covering the range of domains from proposal submission to the coordination and monitoring of the subsystems that make up each telescope. It must also monitor itself and provide a reliable operating platform. This paper will provide an update on the design status of TM, covering the make-up of the consortium delivering the design, a brief description of the key challenges and the top level architecture, and its software development plans for tackling the construction phase of the project. It will also briefly describe the consortium’s response to the SKA Project’s decision in the second half of 2016 to adopt the processes set out by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for system architecture design and documentation, including a re-evaluation of its deliverables, documentation and approach to internal reviews.publishe

Observations of Magnetic Restructuring during the Development of Coronal Mass Ejections

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