Acronyms and Vocab and Our Proposal, Oh my!!

Acronyms and Vocab

What do these mean? Here is the start of a list, fill in the answers right next to the words! Add more words/acronyms to the list!

Aperture Radius
Background Annulus
Julian Day
Janskys
Luminosity
Intensity
RA and Dec
Galactic coordinates
APT - Aperture Photometry Tool
DS9

2MASS - Two Micron All Sky Survey; the name says a lot, it is a collection of images covering the entire sky at the 2 micron wavelength of infrared. Some of its goals include cataloging all of the detected stars/galaxies and detecting brown dwarf stars.

SIMBAD - Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data; this is a database of astronomical objects beyond our solar system.

IRAC - Infrared Array Camera; takes images of the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8 micron channels of infrared.

IPAC - Infrared Processing and Analysis Center; the name says exactly what it is, and it's located at CalTech!

IRAF - Image Reduction and Analysis Facility; a program for analyzing IR images and data. It reduces images into pixel array form, which I assume means that the pixels can be rearranged somehow into a better format.

BCD - Basic Calibrated Data

Our Proposal

Here is the link to our Spring 2010 proposal http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/teacher_research/r4-variab/variabProposal.pdf Read through our proposal. Below, list a few things that you totally understand as well as some questions you have.