AST 443 : Project Descriptions

Contents

1. Project 1: Observing Project
2. Project 2: Mock HST Proposal
3. Project 3: Archival Data Project
4. Project 4: Data Analysis Project
5. IDL and Computing

• Observing Project
  You will undertake an observing project using either the
  • R/C spectrograph on the SMARTS 1.5m telescope, or the
  • ANDICAM dual channel optical/near-IR imager on the SMARTS 1.3m telescope.

  This project includes 3 stages, and will take the entire semester.

  Stage 1: Prepare an observing proposal. You will form teams of 2-3 persons and will compete among yourself for observing time. You will write a formal proposal describing a scientific project. You must justify the choice of targets, observing times, etc. These proposals will be peer-reviewed by the whole class.

  Proposals will be due 9/25, and will be peer-reviewed the week of 10/1.

  See here for some practical guidelines

  • Information for the peer review session: Click here
  • To check on the coordinates and magnitudes of your targets, use the following sites:
    • Simbad, for stars and galactic objects.
    • NED, the National Extragalactic Database, for galaxies and their kin.
    • LEDAS, the Leicester port to the Digital Sky Survey.
    Always double-check your coordinates, and make sure there's something there on the image.
  • Stage 2: Time will be awarded based on the results of the peer review. Data will be obtained within a few weeks, and will be returned to the observing teams by the end of October.
  • The proposers will analyze the data, and will present the results.

    Preliminary results will be presented as 15 minute oral talks. These talks will be presented in a mini-symposium during the week of December 4.

    The final results will be presented as a paper in the format of an Astronomical Journal paper. The paper will be graded based on style, readability, and quality of the science. The paper is due on or before 5:00 PM, December 14.

  Students must work in groups of two or three; all will receive the same grade for the project. You may distribute the work any way you see fit.

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• Mock HST Observing Proposal
  Each student will write a mock HST phase I observing proposal. These proposals can to use any current capability of the HST. Read the Cycle 17 proposal page. In particular, read the HST Cycle 16 Primer. (The Cycle 17 call for proposals will not be released until December).

  For the last few years, HST proposal preparation hs required use of a software package called APT. We will not use this. Rather, we will do this the old-fashioned way, by filling in a postscript file template.

  Download the proposal template by right-clicking on this link. Use the "Save Link As" option. You may name this file anything you like, so long as it has a .tex extension. You will also need to download the latex style file by right-clicking on this link. The name of this file must remain phase1.sty. Read the directions in the proposal template file, and fill in the blanks.
  The template (HST_obstemplate.texphase1.sty) are also available on the mathlab disk in the /home/fwalter/hst directory.

  Check here for a LaTeX primer.

  I have uploaded a sample proposal file and the resulting postscript output. You can download this sample latex file instead of obsexample.tex if you wish. For instructions on how to fill out the form, read the comments (lines starting with % in the latex form).

  To process your file, do the following:
  

  • latex filename where filename is the name of the .tex file, without the .tex extension. This processes the latex file and creates a .dvi (device-independent) binary file.
  • dvips -o filename.ps filename. This reads the .dvi file and creates the .ps (postscript) file.
  • If you prefer to see a pdf file, type ps2pdf filename.ps to create the file filename.pdf.

  E-mail the latex file to me by the end of class on November 13. If you wish to include figures, please also e-mail me the .ps file.
  Please do not e-mail the STScI help desk for help.
  I will post the files and the assignments here. Proposals will be peer-reviewed on December 11.

  Peer-review information is now available on this page. Please note your assignments, and read all the files. I will update the tardy files as they come in.

• Archival Data Project
  Each student will obtain and analyze some publicly available archival data. These data can be obtained over the network. A short proposal outlining what data are needed, and what will be done with them, is required. Results will be presented as poster papers during finals week. Check here for details.

  Links to archival websites are here.

  What makes for a good poster? See here.

• Data Analysis Project
  The data analysis project is described in more detail here. You must write software for this project in IDL (see below).

  Project Assigned: October 2.
  Project Due December 7, 5:00 PM.

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  Setting Up IDL

  IDL is installed on the Math Sinc site Sun workstations. The executable should be in your path, at /usr/local/bin/rsi. To start IDL, type idl.

  If you will be working with fits files, you will need access to the astronomy IDL library. Make sure /home/fwalter/pro is in your IDL_PATH. You can do this by adding the line
  

  setenv IDL_PATH +/usr/local/itt:+/home/fwalter/pro: to your .cshrc file. Then type source .cshrc to have this change take effect.

  If you are having problems, do the following

  1. Are you in the right shell? We're using the Cshell. type tcsh to enter the Cshell. If this solves your problems, your default shell is the bash shell. You will have to type tcsh every time you log in.
  2. Do you have the right .cshrc file? type more .cshrc. The first line should read # aliases for AST 443 If not, type cp /mt/cootie/home/fwalter/.cshrc . You will need to do this only once all semester, unless you somehow delete the file.
  3. Look for a line in the .cshrc file. If it says
     setenv IDL_PATH +/usr/local/rsi:+/home/fwalter/pro:
     then change it to
     setenv IDL_PATH +/usr/local/itt:+/home/fwalter/pro:
     This corrects an altered directory name in the upgrade to IDL version 6.4
  4. If you have downloaded or changes the .cshrc file, or if you had to change your shell, you must type source .cshrc
     If the bash shell is your default, you will need to do this every time you log in.