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Physics 134 – Observational Astrophysics – Fall 2022
Meeting time: MW 12:30-13:45 Broida 5223 Sept 26
Prof Philip Lubin
Office – 2015 C Broida
Office hours: TBD
Class contact email address – lubin@.ucsb.edu
TA: Jeonghwa Kim
Office Hours: TBD – link will be sent you on Gauchospace
e-mail: jeonghwa_kim@ucsb.edu
Learning Asst: Samuel Whitebook
e-mail: sewhitebook@ucsb.edu
Textbook: To Measure the Sky – F. Chromey – Cambridge Press – 2nd edition
Final presentations:
Tue Dec 6 from 12-3 in class
Image processing program often used in the class – PC (Win) for Mac see link below:
This AstroArt program is very useful if you plan on doing longer term work in astro image processing but it is not free. The demo (very useful) is free.
It is installed on UCSB machines in the class.
Astro Art for astronomical image processing
Running Astro Art on a Mac:
https://www.astroart-forum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=382
Running Astro Art image processing code remotely using UCSB machines:
http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~pcs/apps/accessconnectwise.html
Useful Free Programs:
DS9 – Astronomical Image Processing
http://ds9.si.edu/site/Download.html
Astro Image J – Astronomical Image Processing
https://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/astroimagej/
FITS Liberator – turns FITS files into common image formats
https://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/
GIMP – Similar to Photoshop
In The Sky – Astronomical Sky Plotter of objects
https://in-the-sky.org/graphs.php
Skymaker – image simulation software
https://www.astromatic.net/software/skymaker
Astrometry.Net – astrometry analysis of images – identifies and locates the position of your objects
Useful textbook:
Observational Astrophysics – P. Lena
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642218149
An Introduction to Observational Astrophysics – Mark Gallaway – Springer 2016
Available on Amazon as paperback and eBook
Useful paper with comparison of ground and space detection – oriented towards SETI but applicable to all observing:
“The Search for Directed Intelligence”
REACH – Reviews in Human Space Exploration – Vol 1, 20-45, March 2016
http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.02108
Astronomy Picture of the Day
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_Picture_of_the_Day
LCO Resources
- Instruments
lco.global/observatory/instruments/
- Exposure and SNR Calculator
exposure-time-calculator.lco.global/
- Visibility Calculator
https://lco.global/observatory/visibility/
- Filters
lco.global/observatory/instruments/filters/
- BANZAI – Data Processing Pipeline
lco.global/documentation/data/BANZAIpipeline/
- Recent Science and Educational Research (great for ideas)
- Spacebook – Learn Astronomy (good overview)
- Decompressing FPacked data – converting .FZ files to .FITS
https://lco.global/education/observing/fpack/
LSST – Rubin Observatory – Science Book
https://www.lsst.org/scientists/scibook
Hubble Space Telescope Legacy Database – HST FITS Images and spectra
Aladin Lite Sky Atlas
https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite/
Observable Asteroids and Comets and other objects
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbwobs.html#/
Simbad Database
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/
Example search for SDSS 20J091557.78:
Exoplanet Transit Database for Occultation
http://var2.astro.cz/ETD/predictions.php
Asteroids and Comets
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/
Supernova Databases
Latest supernovae by Rochester Astronomy at Purdue University:
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html
Transient Name Server – generally useful for searching known transients
https://wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/
Example for SN 2019slu
https://wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/object/2019slu
Weekly papers – Each week a paper on a topic of your interest in observational astrophysics is due by 5 PM Monday (except first week). Please submit on GauchoSpace.
Homework – HW will be assigned as needed. Submit on GauchoSpace.
HW 1 – Due Oct 9 – Astro Art tutorials (download Astro Art demo (free) – submit one PDF of all screen shots http://users.libero.it/mnico/labindex.htm
HW 2 – Due Oct 15 Physics 134 HW 1-a
HW 3 – Due Oct 25 – bbColors bbColors-a (see below)
Final Exam
TBD Online – Each group will present a 20 minute talk summarizing all of all of their work. Split the time , as usual, between each team member to allow everyone to speak.
Introduce the project(s) with some background as to what you are doing and why it is important and what the larger context in astronomy is for this subject.
Final Research Paper – Have ready by the final and place in your folder under a sub directory call “Final Research Paper”. The paper should be about 20 pages long and should include the following sections:
- Introduction and theory of project
- Historical background
- Larger context of importance of the research
- Data collection including any problems you had
- Summary images of your data (all your good data (images, plots, code etc)) should be placed in dir with the paper under a sub (sub) dir “Data”
- Data analysis including plots
- Error analysis as appropriate
- Summary and conclusions including what you would do next time if you were to do it “all over again”
Class Gmail account (will not be used this quarter):
User: ucsb.physics134
Pass: given in class
Class Data Server – UCSB Box (this is where your LCO images will appear and where you will put your PPTX or equivalent presentations.
Make a sub directory with your full name (first and last). DO NOT delete other peoples folders!
sign-in with UCSB Net ID
Stellarium – http://www.stellarium.org/ – this is very useful in planning your observations.
Events and Links (Note that due to the current CV situation, most of these are remote and may be at different times/ days this quarter)
Physics Department Colloquium: Tuesdays at 4:00 in Broida 1640
Astro Colloquium: Thur 2:45-3:45 in Broida 3302
LCOGT Colloq usually Thur 3:30-4:30 at the LCOGT facility – BUT van to colloq leaves from Physics lot at 3:15 and you must sign up to get room on the van. Van returns you to Broida after talk.
LCOGT Colloq Schedule (must sign up for van)
LCOGT – Las Cumbres Observatory
LCO – Exposure Time Calculator
Available filters on 0.4m LCO telescopes:
- Bessel-B
- Bessel-V
- Clear
- PanSTARRS-Z
- PanSTARRS-w
- SDSS-gp
- SDSS-ip
- SDSS-rp
- SDSS-up
Mandatory Assignments and Presentations
]Write a short (1-2 page) paper each week on an astro topic of interest such as one of the APOD pics of the week by Monday the following week (except the first week) by 5 PM (PT).
Send papers to the class TA on GauchoSpace. TA will send you info on this.
Additionally, there is an exercise involving blackbodies and color
Blackbody and Color temperature HW exercise is here:
Blackbody Calculator:
https://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php
Observing Projects
Each student will do several observing projects. We encourage groups of students to work together. A maximum of three students per groups. Single student projects are also possible.
You should have two or three science-oriented observing projects and no more than one astrophotography
(pretty picture) project (three projects in all). Each group or student will give a 5 minute presentation on ONE of each of their projects. This is not
optional. In general this is done during class meetings.
Here is an example request form to submit to the TA, who will then submit your request to LCO and return the data to you:
Observation Request Sheet template
Ongoing Information
Class Notes
The most up to date version of the class notes (different than the observation instructions, below)
can be found below. Copies should be available on the class drive, but they cannot be guaranteed
to be up to date.
Class Notes available here:
Aperture Photometry Notes:
Lectures
Large Scale CCD and CMOS – Phys 134 – b
Center for Adaptive Optics Lectures
https://www.ucolick.org/~max/289/
Astroart Labs and Tutorials
In the newer versions of AstroArt there are tutorial in the Help area under “Quick Start Tutorials”. Please use the newer version which is installed on the class computers.
Tutorial #1 Noise reduction.
Tutorial #2 Dark frame and flat field correction. Tutorial #3 Blinking two images. Tutorial #4 Deconvolution. Tutorial #5 Aligning and summing images. Tutorial #6 Trichromy and LRGB. Tutorial #7 Image processing on comets. Tutorial #8 Mosaic. Tutorial #9 Astrometric and photometric reduction. Tutorial #10 FFT. Tutorial #11 Masks. Tutorial #12 Camera control. Tutorial #13 Scripts. |
In the older version to do the Astroart Labs, follow the tutorial given here. (http://users.libero.it/mnico/labindex.htm). You should be able to do labs 1-3,5, and 6,
but please do check out the others and read what they have to say. A few of the commands
mentioned have been deprecated since this was made, but you should be able to find your way
around anyway. The images needed are present in the Astroart Labs directory on the class drive.
If they are corrupted, you can recreate them with the zipped files present.
Observing with LCOGT’s BOS Telescope
See the quick guide linked below. After your observation is made, the relevant FITS files will be put
on to the class server account. Simply upload/download your files to your directory on the class drive and begin working with them as you please.
To add an observation, click on the “Google Calendar” button, log in on the class gmail account,
and make your edits there. Be careful not to disturb other observations!