Pune hosts a global workshop on astronomical digital signal

Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is hosting a 5-day international workshop, Casper 2011, from October 10, to promote collaboration for astronomy signal processing and electronics research.

Casper 2011 will be attended by more than 100 astronomical digital signal processing experts from all over the world. It will review past accomplishments and future plans for development of new instruments and tools, including possibilities for designing instruments required for projects.

Casper seeks to  accelerate design of astronomical instrumentation by promoting design reuse through development of open-source hardware and software.

Apart from Indian experts and students, particularly from NCRA’s giant metre-wave radio telescope, there are 75 international participants at the meet.

On October 10, Matthew Bailes of Australia will deliver a talk on ‘Discovery of a diamond planet’ and on October 12, Dan Werthimer of Berkeley, US, will talk on ‘Are we alone? The search for extra-terrestrial civilisations.’

Both these talks will be held at Chandrashekhar auditorium at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at 6 pm and are open to the public.