Astrophysics Laboratory for Stellar Necrology

The Space Science Center at Morehead State University has developed an Astrophysics Laboratory for Stellar Necrology. It is used for imaging and analysis and features ten Linux boxes running Fedora Core 7 with the following commonly-used astronomical data reduction software packages installed:

• AIPSCIAO
• MIRIAD
• SAS
• IRAF
• FTOOLS
• HEASOFT

The Astrophysics Laboratory also currently operates an internal server, a Web-based file exchange server, a Web-page server, a 12 TB storage array, six computer systems and two fileservers. The Space Science Center also plans to ultimately host a total of 24 computers in the new Space Science Center facility.

Data collected with the Morehead State University Space Science Center 21-Meter Space Tracking Antenna (and archival data from other instruments) is reduced and analyzed by students and faculty utilizing the facilities of the Astrophysics Laboratory for Stellar Necrology. Radio astronomy research projects in which the 21-M Space Tracking Antenna is currently engaged include:

• Long-term monitoring campaigns of active galactic nuclei (AGNs)
• Transient phenomena (radio afterglow of GRBs)
• Multi-frequency observations