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Class introduction
ASTRONOMY 535
OBSERVATIONAL TECHNIQUES
CLASS NOTES
Fall 2008
Instructor: Jon Holtzman
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Class introduction
Properties of light and error analysis
Magnitudes and photometric systems
Observed fluxes and the count equation
Errors in photon rates
Noise equation: how do we predict expected errors?
Error propagation
Determining sample parameters: averaging measurements
Random errors vs systematic errors
Effects of the earth's atmosphere
Night sky emission
Transmission of atmosphere
Sources of extinction
Airmass and zenith distance dependence
Atmospheric refraction
Seeing: theory and practice
What does seeing cause the image to look like?
Astronomical optics
Single surface optics and definitions
Multi-surface systems
Two-mirror telescopes:
Definitions for multi-surface system: stops and pupils
Aberrations
Surface requirements for unaberrated images
Aberrations: general description and low-order aberrations
Aberration compensation and different telescope types
Sources of aberrations
Ray tracing
Physical (diffraction) optics
Adaptive Optics
Telescope design considerations
Telescope mounts
Large mirror types
Using telescopes
INSTRUMENTATION
Location of optics
Field Flatteners
Focal Reducers/Expanders
Pupil reimagers
Filters
Fabry-Perot Interferometer
Spectrographs
Astronomical spectrographs
Dispersing elements
Operational items: using a spectrograph
Non-dispersive spectroscopy
Detectors
Basic Principles and Properties
CCDs
IR detectors
UV and other detectors
Data Reduction: details and subtleties
Data reduction steps
Constructing calibration frames : MOVED TO LAB
Combining images
Biases
Darks
Flats
Other items
Basic data reduction techniques: MOVED TO LAB
Coadding images
Measuring positions of objects and relative pointings between frames
Shifting images, and more generally, spatial sampling of images
Spectroscopic data reduction: MOVED TO LAB
Basic astronomical image processing: MOVED TO LAB
What is involved in image processing?
Astronomy packages
Image display
Image file formats
Photometry
Aperture photometry
Crowding
Atmospheric extinction
Standard stars
Least squares fitting
Photometric systems
Emission line photometry
Surface photometry
Spatial filtering
Astronomy databases
General data bases
Specific project databases
SDSS
Jon Holtzman 2008-12-03
