ASTRO 21Introduction to Research in Astronomy

2 credits · Astronomy and Astrophysics · Penn State

The course is designed to provide first year undergraduate students in both the ASTRO and PASTR majors with necessary tools and techniques to perform research. Students will practice a variety of techniques on authentic astronomical data, which might include light curves from the Kepler mission, galaxy and stellar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or pulsar data from the Green Bank or Arecibo telescopes. An emphasis will be placed on using common tools for observational astronomy, such as viewing astronomical FITS images in SAOimage. Students will be introduced to the common programming languages and environments used by astronomers at the time the course is offered, which currently includes Python and IDL. Students will be given experience in calculating statistical information about a set of astronomical data using the R programming language and its built-in tools. Students will make plots to illustrate a pattern in their data using the tools in Python, IDL, or R, for example.