Copyright Garrett Keating et al.

Garrett's presentation consists of three different sections - introducing radio astronomy, current radio astronomy projects at the ATA, and current SETI projects at the ATA.

For the first section, he introduces some of the fundamental components of how radio astronomy works and how it's different from optical astronomy. He gives a little overview of what kind of objects can be seen with a radio telescope (as opposed to an optical telescope), how radio telescope work (both alone and as part of an array), and some of the unique challenges that radio astronomy possesses, along with an introduction of the ATA and what makes it such a unique telescope.

In the second section, he describes some of the key radio astronomy research that is going on at the site, including the search for starless galaxies, pulsar detection, the examination of magnetic fields in space and the fast correlator project (which happens to be his area of research).

Finally, he discusses SETI and some of the motivations behind the search. He will likely review a little of SETIs past projects, and show what the ATA will be capable of compared to those projects. He will also show what exactly it is that SETI is searching for, and describe how SETI plans to conduct its search for ET with the ATA.

Garrett is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley with a BA in Astrophysics. He got involved in the science of the ATA recently, when he was given the task of producing radio images of M31 and M33. These early projects turned out so well, that he was invited in July to continue work with the ATA creating images. Before long, he began working on a project called ARTIS, which (when completed) will be capable of producing images as the telescopes take data, much like an optical telescope. Radio images normally take days or weeks (in some cases months) of data reduction to produce, and when ARTIS is completed it will be the first of its kind for a radio telescope. Aside from ARTIS and other rapid imaging projects, he's also interested in radio transients and looking at the distribution of neutral hydrogen gas throughout our universe.

Recorded at the 2008 Oregon Star Party.

Updated April 21, 2009 to fix the last half of the video which was black.

Length: 31:10

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By Daniel Browning