eLearning Collaborative

Our trip in California ended with us learning how to retrieve data using Leopard. This program is specifically used to get Spitzer data. We may use this in the future to find available data and preform our own projects with it. After the group saved photometric data on the galaxy we observed as well as neighboring stars of (hopefully) steady brightness using APT (Astronomy Photometry Tool), we imported the .txt files that were created into excel. This is where we left off at Caltech, but out project doesn't end there. Those steps were just the beginning. Our purpose was to learn how to download the software and data, and learn how to use it in an environment where we could troubleshoot with people who knew what they were doing. Now that we are back in Rochester, we can take this project in many directions. One option would be to do light curves on the stars around the galaxy we did photometry on. We need to determine if they are of stable enough brightness to compare to the galaxy. We could also finishe the project so that we may determine how much the galaxy is varying throughout the time period when we observed it. There are many projects that are possible with the same set of data and I am excited to start doing some science!

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