Greetings to students in ASTR 4880 from the instructor, Nancy Morrison.

This page is intended to provide a backup copy of the materials displayed in lecture, announcements relevant to the class, and access to the wealth of astronomical information on the World Wide Web.

Latest update: 12/11/09 0:55

Course documents, PDF unless otherwise noted:

Information for computer labs (click session numbers in table)

Session Done Mon. Done Wed. Topics
1 √ √ Setting up IRAF, file handling, splot
2 √Oct. 28 Image sections, basic image arithmetic
3 Nov. 2Oct. 14 Measurements with splot, adding header keywords with asthedit
4 Nov. 9 (apedit, aptrace for star); Nov. 16 Oct. 21 Outline of échelle data reduction; editing and tracing apertures, extracting spectrum; flat fielding
5 Nov. 9 Oct. 28 Interactive curve fitting with IRAF
6 Nov. 16 Nov. 4 Graphing data points with error bars
7 Nov. 23 Nov. 18 Processing biases and flats with specialized tasks; cosmic ray removal
8.1 Nov. 30   Additional header keywords for the stellar spectrum; heliocentric correction; wavelength calibration
8.2 Dec. 7 Dec. 2, identify not finished; Dec. 9Additional header keywords for the stellar spectrum; heliocentric correction; wavelength calibration

Tuesday, October 13, 2009: slitless spectrum of the solar corona (click picture to see original page, scroll down for this picture)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009: cross section of one order of a spectrum of the star α Cas, used to calculate the power received at the CCD in the first step of the throughput calculation

Tuesday, November 17, 2009: Article on optical fibers (figure 7, p. 49, shown in class; 676 KB PDF full article)

Tuesday, December 1, 2009: Picture album of raw échelle spectra