[Everyone] Parkes Murriyang user community help and support for the wideband low (UWL) receiver

[George Hobbs]

Dear Parkes/Murriyang users (or potential users in the future!),

[Apologies if you receive this more than once and please forward to people who may not receive this through the normal email channels.]

 The primary instrument at the Parkes/Murriyang radio telescope is currently the ultra-wide-bandwidth receiver system operating as a single pixel receiver between 704 and 4032 MHz.  Many teams have already made excellent use of this receiver, but we also know that some users are having trouble accessing or using their data sets. Other people have some challenges observing with the system and some people have been unsuccessful in obtaining telescope observing time through the time allocation process.  We therefore wish to support the community by running a set of classes to address questions that you may have about the system. These questions could be as diverse as “I have some pulsar observations, but I don’t know how to start processing it”, or “I don’t understand how to set up the observations” or “I need to understand the technical details of the receiver for my science …”.

This email is therefore a call for questions/problems that you may be having.  Questions can be submitted on https://www.jotform.com/form/222631125930851.  At the end of the month (28th Feb 2023) we will link together similar questions and then identify an expert who will be able to respond to that set of questions.  The intention is that the expert would then respond to the question in an online forum (at a time suitable for both the expert and the questioners) allowing anyone interested to attend and the response recorded and made available.

If you are have questions relating to the Parkes wide-bandwidth receiver observing system, or simply wish to be on the mailing list about this initiative, then please fill in the online form.  If the form does not work for you then please indicate your interest by emailing george.hobbs at csiro.au.

Regards,
George Hobbs, Jane Kaczmarek and Lawrence Toomey