Stars as a motor technology transfer

Developing specialized equipment within the university has positive impacts on several areas, even outside the specific area of knowledge and the particular problems they were formulated for

By: Iván Tobar Bocaz, Journalist – Vice-Rectorate for Research and Development ivtobar@udec.cl
Images: Courtesy of CePIA

Leer en Español

One of the ways to encourage technological development within academia is by providing answers to specific needs that arise in different areas of knowledge, whose solutions, once implemented, can be adapted to meet challenges in other areas.  

This is the case of the projects at the University of Concepción’s Center for Astronomical Instrumentation, CePIA, led by the Department of Astronomy Professor Dr. Rodrigo Reeves Díaz.  

“The University plays a key role in society by educating human resources with high-level knowledge, which can be inserted into the regional industry,” said the director of this center financed by the Biobío Regional Government through the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness. 

“If our students work with state-of-the-art technology, they are more likely to achieve changes at an industrial level that positively impact the competitiveness of the regional industry,” he added.  

As for the potential of technology transfer, the professor explained that “developing cutting-edge technology allows us to visualize the use of technology to solve local industry problems, so, in that sense, the role of transferring these developments to society is fulfilled.”  

Translating electronic signals into astronomical data 

One of the technological projects implemented recently at CePIA UdeC is the development of calibration loads, which, as Lilian Basoalto Salazar, a researcher at the Center, explains, “are a calibration system that will be used to calibrate the astronomical data of Argentina’s LLAMA (Large Latin American Millimeter/submillimeter Array) observatory.”  

“This calibration system consists of three loads that follow the blackbody theory and allow for a physical sense of the data that the radio telescope will take,” explained the UdeC Physical Sciences Ph.D. student. 

”The signal of an object,” Lilian explained, “captured from the sky by the radio telescope, is stored in computers in power units and can be digital accounts, watts, or voltage. But when the astronomer wants to study these data from the source, trying to interpret these units is not a good idea since they do not have a useful physical/astronomical sense.” So, the technological challenge addressed, in this case, is “to transform the power data to valuable data for the astronomer, such as brightness temperature, which is the parameter directly related to the power.”  

“All existing radio-observatories use these instruments to calibrate their data, so they will always be required in observatories, so we have a good opportunity as CePIA laboratory to industrialize these instruments,” Lilian emphasized.  

Technologies for a better understanding of space 

The different projects being implemented within CePIA have beneficial synergy. This is the case of the development of calibration loads with the Leighton Chajnantor Telescope (LCT) Project, which is the result of a collaboration between UdeC, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the Shanghai Normalist University (ShNU). This project seeks to install the first radio telescope in Chilean territory completely controlled by a university.  

“The Calibration Loads project is so relevant for CePIA’s development as it was the first professional project we tackled as a university laboratory unit,” Dr. Reeves stressed.  

“It taught us a lot, from the technical point of view, we applied scientific knowledge to approach the project, and it allowed us to train many students from different programs, disciplines, and faculties within the University,” said the UdeC professor.  

“It was a motor for development within the laboratory and for training advanced human capital, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels,” commented CePIA’s director, adding that ”it is a development that can be incorporated into the LCT project as a calibration device for astronomical signal sensors.”