Physics 134 – Observational Astrophysics – Fall 2023

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

http://www.msb-astroart.com/

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

https://www.gimp.org/

In The Sky – Astronomical Sky Plotter of objects

https://in-the-sky.org/graphs.php

https://in-the-sky.org/

Skymaker – image simulation software

https://www.astromatic.net/software/skymaker

Astrometry.Net – astrometry analysis of images – identifies and locates the position of your objects

https://astrometry.net/

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)

lco.global/highlights/

Spacebook – Learn Astronomy (good overview)

lco.global/spacebook/

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

https://hla.stsci.edu/

Siena Galaxy Atlas – 400,000 galaxies – SGA 2020

https://sga.legacysurvey.org/

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.04888

The SGA-2020 uses optical grz imaging over ≈20,000 deg2 from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 9 and infrared imaging in four bands (spanning 3.4-22 μm) from the six-year unWISE coadds.

It is more than 95% complete for galaxies larger than R(26)≈25 arcsec and r<18 measured at the 26 mag arcsec−2 isophote in r-band.

The atlas delivers precise coordinates, multi-wavelength mosaics, azimuthally averaged optical surface brightness profiles, model images and photometry, and additional ancillary metadata for the full sample.

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#/

https://theskylive.com/

Simbad Database

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/

Example search for SDSS 20J091557.78:

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%4010199759&Name=SDSS%20J091557.78%2b292626.4&submit=submit

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

Astrophotography – How to make a beautiful tri-color image

Astrophotography post-processing

Examples of class Tri-Color astronomical imaging – Right click and Open in New Tab to view full image

60 MP monochrome CMOS FPA (1 e read noise) on Planewave Delta Rho 350

DSLR Astrophotography – Sherwin Shi – ZIP files – download to access images

Startrails-1-Sherwin Shi

Startrails-2-Sherwin Shi

Milkyway-Sherwin Shi

SpaceX Launchs-Sherwin Shi

Moon-Sherwin Shi

Homework – HW will be assigned as needed. Submit on Canvas.

Every day – look at the APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) – https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

HW 1 – Due Oct 9 – Form 2-3 person team, write up 2 page paper on why this is a interesting project and suitable for the class and present research project (as a team) in 5 min PPTX format to entire class

HW 2– Due Oct 16 – Astro Art tutorials (use class or PSR – some can be done on Astro Art demo (free) – submit one PDF of all relevant tutorial screen shots.

HW 3 – Due Oct 30 – UAP Research – HW

HW 4 – Due Oct 30 – Physics 134 HW 1-a

HW 5 – Due Nov 13 – bbColors bbColors-a (see below)

Final Exam

Each team 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!

ucsb.box.com

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:

LCOGT Colloq (check schedule) 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.

Physics Dept Colloq schedule

Physics Dept Colloq talk list

Astro web event schedule,

LCOGT Colloq Schedule (must sign up for van)

KITP Schedule

LCOGT – Las Cumbres Observatory

Sedgwick Weather log

LCO – Exposure Time Calculator

LCO – Visibility Tool

LCO – Instruments

LCO – Filters

Available filters on 0.4m LCO telescopes:

Bessel-B
Bessel-V
Clear
PanSTARRS-Z
PanSTARRS-w
SDSS-gp
SDSS-ip
SDSS-rp
SDSS-up

Blackbody and Color temperature HW exercise is here:

bbColors-b

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:

134-Notes – 10-22

Aperture Photometry Notes:

CH6 – Aperture Photometry

Lectures

Phys 134 Lecture1 10-20-22

Phys 134 Lecture2 10-20-22

Coordinate Systems and Time-a

Large Scale CCD and CMOS – Phys 134 – b

Keck Wide Field Imager

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.

Observation Instructions

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!