ChrisM_LabJournal.txt

Today I learned how to use github. Sort of.
I have no idea what to use for my research project. I like cosmology.
It sounds like the telescopes we have access to have limited spectroscopic abilities.

I need to have a meeting with the professor to figure out what a good project would encompass.

For the assignment of finding a catalog for finding quasars we were able to find the catalog on the NASA HEARSAR(sp?) website. The formatting needed to be fixed first so I used the FixedTarget command after I ran into issues with SkyCoord.

I made a plot to see what objects would be visible by ploting the attenuation, moon seperation, and altitude. I am trying to figure out how to factor in moon luminosty.

I used a moon phase calendar from google to check the moon phase during my time window at CTIO. 

I can still optimize the code better to sort the table by fractional observation time in order to rank objects for different observation times.

Potential projexts:
Is there galaxy rotational axis correlation: Requires a catalog with spectra to fit rotation curves. Correlate with galaxy classification, "Axis ratio", and density of galaxies in surrounding space. SDSS galaxy environment information catalog. https://www.sdss.org/dr15/data_access/value-added-catalogs/

I updated my notes for my project and have opened six papers and saved them to my Zotero.

It is difficult to work on this project only from the astrolab. I should figure out how to work on this from home.

Vignetting: dark regions at edges due to scattering

Bias/Overscan: give information about electronics. Might have something to do with amplifiers.

A large enough number of samples will cause many types of distrobutions (poisson included) into gaussian distributions.

Serial register/horizontal CCD: bottom row of CCD array. Gets pushed right to a single cell.

Dark current = thermal noise

quantum efficiency is bad for ~<300nm

n_{tot}=sqrt{(n_{phot})^2+(n_{dark})^2+(n_{read})^2+(n_{bias})^2}

noise=sqrt{signal}

want to subtract dark current from scan by exposing for same amount of time.

bias is read noise?

today we are beginning a characterization lab report on CCDs. Refer to the back of the packet for grading.

Compare measurements with vendor information.

Gain: #electrons/ADU. But it is somehow inversely related to the gain of the amplifier?

Must take two bias frames and two flatfield exposures to get difference images

get ___ for single files and mget ___* for all files that begin with the same starting part.

We are working on a new Reducing Imaging Data using Bias, Flats, Darks, and Images.

Thus far I have been using ds9 to collect data for the processes. I will probably have to come in over the weekend because my personal research is pressing and I have a group meeting presentation coming up tomorrow. Yay 19 credits...