ASTRONOMY 535/435 - Fall 2009

Instructor: Dr. Jon Holtzman

Office: Department of Astronomy, Room 202B

Phone: 646-8181

Email: holtz at nmsu.edu

Web information: http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/holtz/a535

Class time: 9:30-10:20 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in Astr 119

Some useful references:

• Schroeder, Astronomical Optics. Good reference on optics relevant for astronomy. Goes into significantly more detail than we will cover in class.
• Astronomical CCD Observing and Reduction Techniques (ed., S. Howell). Out of print so I will distribute several chapters.
• Birney et al, Observational Astronomy
• Kitchin, Astrophysical Techniques
• Howell, Handbook of CCD Astronomy

Grades will be based on:

Homework/labs	50%
Quizzes	30%
Final	20%

GENERAL INFORMATION AND REQUIREMENTS

• ASTR 535 is designed to introduce students to the concepts and practical considerations of astronomical instrumentation and obtaining, reducing, and analyzing astronomical data. Many of these concepts will also be relevant for general applications of image processing and error analysis. The main topics covered are error analysis, basic optics, cameras and spectrographs, basic understanding of detectors, data reduction, data analysis, and how to plan to make astronomical observations. Subjects in optics will include image formation by telescopes, aberrations, and focal reducing cameras. The discussion of detectors will include CCDs and some near-IR detectors. The material is limited primarily to techniques used in obtaining data in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum, and considers imaging observations as well as some spectroscopy. Attention will be paid to practical experience in data reduction and analysis. This will mostly be computer related work including both original programming and the use of one or more of several standard astronomical image processing packages.

• We will most likely have one midterm and one final exam; the final will be held on Monday, 12/7 from 8:00am-10:00am.

• We will use the Friday class meeting as a pseudo-lab section, where we will attempt to concentrate on the praciticalities of observing and data analysis techniques.

• There will be homework assignments throughout the semester.

• For undergraduates taking the class as ASTR 435, there will likely be only a subset of the required homeworks. This subset will be chosen to attempt to develop some of the basic ideas of the class, but perhaps will not extend as much to the applications as some of the additional problems that will be required for the graduate students.

ASTRONOMY 535 - Fall 2009 - Approximate class schedule

This provides a rough schedule for when we will be covering the different topics. However, my philosophy is to take the time that we need to understand the different issues, and this is more important than sticking to the schedule. So this schedule is likely to be only approximate.

Week	Subjects	Lab
8/24-8/28	Properties of light, magnitudes, photometric systems	Time, coordinate systems, observability tools
8/31-9/4	Errors in photon rates	Astronomy software: various packages. Image display.
9/9-9/11	Effects of the earth's atmosphere: emission, transmission, refraction, seeing	Astronomy packages continued: IDL, IRAF, XVISTA, GAIA
9/14-9/18	Optics: geometric optics.	Basic image analysis: image statistics, histograms, cross-sections
9/21-9/25	Optics: diffraction and adaptive optics	File formats and WCS. FITSIO library. WCS tools.
9/28-10/2	Telescopes. APO trip?	Procedures and scripting
10/5-10/9	Instrumentation: focal reducers, pupil reimagers, filters, Fabry-Perot	Calibration data: biases, darks, flat fields
10/12-10/16	Spectrographs	Stellar photometry: aperture, crowded field, PSF modelling
10/13-10/23	Catchup.	NM Symposium?
10/26-10/30	Detectors: CCDs, IR detectors	Photometric calibration data: standard stars, extinction and transformation coefficients
11/2-11/6	Data reduction	Long-slit spectroscopic calibration data: wavelength calibration, flux calibration, object extraction
11/9-11/13	Data reduction	Echelle spectroscopy
11/16-11/20	Photometry: aperture, crowded field, emission-line, surface	Infrared imaging issues
11/30-12/4	Spectroscopy	Infrared spectroscopic issues