AST 613, Astronomical Observational Techniques and Instrumentation: Fall 2025

This material can be found online at URL

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/ast613/ast613.html

Tentative schedule for the quarter

Week 1A: The Forces of Evil: the Earth's atmosphere, the interstellar medium, and assorted minions
Week 1B: Neutrinos I. Properties of neutrinos, "chemical" detectors

Week 2A: Neutrinos II. "Cerenkov" detectors, SN 1987A
Week 2B: Highest-energy gamma rays. Using the atmosphere as a detector, telescopes and observatories. Sources.

Week 3A: Lower-energy gamma rays. Satellite-borne detectors, gamma-ray bursts, the local vs. cosmic debate
Week 3B: X-rays I. X-ray telescopes and detectors, satellite missions, current and future plans

Week 4A: X-rays II. X-ray sources, thermal vs. non-thermal. Our friend Mr. Brehmsstrahlung.
Week 4B: The poor, neglected UV. What could we learn? Why don't we?

Week 6A: optical detectors: eyes, plates, and chips. Some history, the rise and fall of photographic plates.
Week 6B: optical detectors: CCDs, CMOS, and KIDs

Week 9BA optical data analysis I. Here are some raw CCD images. Make them clean! Then measure something.
Week 9B: optical data analysis II. Perform aperture photometry on your clean images (now including homework!)

Week 11A: Near-IR. Mostly ground-based. Similarities and differences from optical CCD work. Why so many adaptive optics systems?
Week 11B: Mid-IR. Mostly space-based. What can we learn from these wavelengths?

Week 12A: Far-IR and sub-mm. Making the transition from photons to waves.
Week 12B: Radio I. The many sources of radio waves continuum vs. line emission. A few selected uses of radio observations

Week 13A: Radio II. How to detect waves (instead of photons). Progress of radio telescopes and detectors.
Week 13B: Radio interferometry. The basic idea, and why it's so easy in radio and so hard in optical.

HW 3: Chandra X-ray analysis exercise
Due Tues, Sep 30, at start of class.
- Please write down answers to all the items (with names like "Part 6, A" or "Part 2, B") in the following lecture. We'll be doing these in class, so you may do most or all of this work during our regular meetings.
  - Chandra exercise, day 2
- Answers to Chandra exercises

HW 4: optical CCD analysis: aperture photometry (MWR: need to revise slightly)
Due Tues, Oct 28, at start of class.
- Please write down answers to all the items (with names like "Part 6, A" or "Part 2, B") in the following lecture; note it's Day Two of the optical exercise only. Don't worry about Day One.
  - Optical CCD analysis, Day Two
- Answers to CCD exercises
HW 5: Optical CCD analysis: differential photometry
Due Tues, Nov 4, at start of class.

NASA's Astrophysics Data System is the place to go to search for papers, old or new.
arXiv.org's "Astrophysics" section is a good place to find the latest hot preprints
Some good interfaces to the enormous wealth of on-line catalogs are
- SIMBAD especially good for objects in the Galaxy
- NED specially good for objects outside the Galaxy
- Vizier for detailed catalog queries
Ned Wright's Cosmology Calculator is an excellent tool for converting redshift values into distances, volumes, or other quantities.
Stellarium is a very nice (and free) planetarium program
Good tools for making finding charts or investigating new sources include
- Aladin (can download program, or use web version)
- Skyview (web interface only)

This page maintained by Michael Richmond. Last modified Aug 6, 2025.