Things Students Should Know b4 CalTech

Here's a start to some topics/skills (currently in no particular order) for our students before we get to CalTech. Luisa has links for many of these which the kids can go searching for on the wiki. Please feel free to add and/or comment.

LUISA ADDS: make sure everyone knows that this is going to be work. fun, but work. and it is unlikely to make sense the first time through, or possibly even the second or third time through. but keep asking questions until it DOES make sense. that's one of the main points of the visit - to get your questions answered and not let you flail. take good notes. you will go home from this visit, get on with your summer, and forget a lot of it before you get back to it. take good notes!

Topics

CWAYS Big Picture - http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/C-WAYS_Bigger_Picture_and_Goals

CWAYS Proposal - http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/teacher_research/r6-c-ways/cwaysproposal.pdf

Spitzer - mission, wavelengths, footprints, resolution - LMR says: we will cover lots of this on monday morning, no need to do this in detail.

WISE - mission, wavelengths, footprints, resolution - LMR says: we will cover lots of this on monday morning, no need to do this in detail.

Resolution (how deep for students, our exercise?, Luisa's analogy?) resolution - http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/C-WAYS_Resolution_Worksheet LMR says: probably should have your kids start thinking about these issues, or even do just the one task that gave you an "a-ha" moment.

Formation and Evolution of Young Stellar Objects --> LW discussion of YSOs - LMR says: we will cover lots of this on monday morning, no need to do this in extreme detail. http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/Studying_Young_Stars http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/resources/star_formation/ http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/explore/blog/158-The-Story-of-Star-Formation

LMR says: I will probably assume that people know the basics of magnitudes, HR diagrams, fits files, etc. We will get into this in more detail during the visit, but i won't be starting all the way back at the beginning.

Source Matching - LMR says: i assume you mean the coordinate updating you are doing now, right?

Units - specifically this page with its analogy http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/Units#Aside_on_fluxes_and_flux_densities

Skills

Luisa has a link that we can pull from Working with the C-WAYS data how much can we prep our kids for ahead of time?

Track data using spreadsheet - LMR says: yes, please

Simple math using spreadsheet - LMR says: yes, please

Graphing using spreadsheet - LMR says: yes, please

LMR says: also importing text files into spreadsheet

Image processing DS9 - LMR says: not so much processing as analysis in ds9. pull up an image, more than one, change color table, stretch, make RGB images, etc. though, again, no need to know this in exquisite detail; we will do this during our visit so people will also learn on the fly.

Image processing APT, open fits, change scale/brightness/contrast, photometry/aperture/background subtraction, retrieve data from table - LMR says: this is a LOT to ask people to do ahead of time! please just worry about the "big picture" concepts behind photometry - what is it, why do it. then we can all learn together from there. http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/Photometry and even this http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/I%27m_ready_to_go_on_to_a_more_advanced_discussion_of_photometry if you are feeling motivated

Making Mosaics? - LMR says: don't worry about this. we can cover it conceptually and lean on others' processings of mosaics to get by.

Vocab/Acronym Scavenger Hunt

Aperture Radius

Background Annulus

Janskys

Luminosity

Intensity

RA and Dec

APT - Aperture Photometry Tool

DS9

2MASS

IRAC

IPAC

IRAF

Mosaic

SHA

reduction

pipeline

electromagnetic spectrum/multiwavelength astronomy

YSO

BRC

HH

HII

Color-color/color-magnitude plots

SEDs