Astronomer's Toolkit
Astrophysics Data System, aka ADS.
Besancon model of the Galaxy - This web tool will
simulate a sample of stars belonging to the Milky Way (including
their colors, magnitudes, and velocities) for an input direction and
area of observation.
Stellar Evolution Database - This web tool presents
a stellar evolution database in a user friendly way. Created by
Aaron Dotter while a graduate student at Dartmouth, this is a
one-stop shop for both synthetic and empirical isochrones and stellar
luminosity functions. These can be generated at a wide range of
ages, [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe] in just about any filter you could want. This paper
describes the database in detail.
Synthetic Stellar Spectra - This website links to a
large library of synthetically generated spectra of stars with a wide
range of temperatures, surface gravities, [Fe/H], and [alpha/Fe]. This paper
describes this library of stellar spectra.
Computing Stuff
I encourage you to use the set of IDL books in the Observatory
computer lab and online help resources.
IDl Searchable
Help - Look here before you ask me how to use a particular
function or procedure, or whether a function exists in IDL to do
X.
IDL tutorials I used in 2008 for this class:
Tutorial 1 - including: how to read
help pages, basic syntax for math, inline programming vs. procedures,
plotting lines instead of points, plotting more than one set of data
on the same figure, adding a legend to a figure.
Tutorial 2 - Hess diagrams
Tutorial 3 - Hess diagrams,
calculating apparent magnitude uncertainty as f(magnitude).
Making
histograms with IDL
Image
processing with IDL
UNIX/Linux
tutorial that steps you through all of the basics of the Linux
operating system and the basic commands.
Related to SDSS
SDSS - the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey project.
SDSS Data Release 8 paper. This paper and
references therein describes the most recent release of imaging and
spectroscopic data available in the SDSS archive in the SDSS website.
You will likely need to look at older references to find out the exact
photometric depth and precision of the SDSS dataset.
Related to LSST
LSST - the Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope project
Discover magazine article about LSST
LSST from
Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
by Z. Ivezic et al, 2008. This paper describes the imaging data,
observing strategy, and science drivers for the LSST project.
Last modified: Mon Jan 17 11:35:56 EST 2011