SURF Cosmology School - Research Practices

Overview and links on astronomy research practices for the summer students.

Transcript

1. Research practices Daniel Lenz, SURF Cosmology School, June 22
2. Introduction ❖ Brief overview on topics that take a while to get familiar with, don’t be overwhelmed :) ❖ Will show lots of examples - feel free to follow along on your laptop and ask lots of questions! ❖ List of links at the end, will also be available on our wiki and on Slack
3. arXiv / astro-ph / ads ❖ (Almost) all articles written and published in astronomy are available on the arXiv ❖ astro-ph is the astronomy subset ❖ Astrophysics data system (ADS) is a search interface for most journals and the arXiv
4. Latex and overleaf ❖ Latex is extremely widely used in all of physics, astronomy, math ❖ WYSINWYG, unlike other programs ❖ overleaf is a browser- based writing platform
5. git / github / bitbucket ❖ Revision control software, invented by Linus Torvalds to maintain the Linux Kernel ❖ github and bitbucket are websites that host code, but also wikis, blogs, and websites
6. Stackoverflow ❖ Stackoverflow is part of Stack Exchange ❖ Largest online community to share knowledge and ask questions
7. NED/skyview ❖ NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), hosted at Caltech, "comprehensive database of multiwavelength data for extragalactic objects, providing a systematic, ongoing fusion of information integrated from hundreds of large sky surveys and tens of thousands of research publications" ❖ skyview, "the internet’s virtual telescope"
8. Plotting Table practices
9. Plotting Table practices
10. Plotting practices ❖ How to display data badly, by Karl Broman ❖ http://genomicsclass.github.io/book/pages/ plots_to_avoid.html
11. astrobetter / blogs / jobregister ❖ Blogs can be a great source of advice for: ❖ Job applications, career paths ❖ Software ❖ Stats ❖ so much more! ❖ List of links available, please add your own! ❖ AAS job register is a (nearly) complete overview of all postdoc & faculty positions in astronomy
12. Tools ❖ No fighting please! ❖ Good software doesn’t always come for free ❖ Editors: ❖ Atom, Sublime, emacs, vim ❖ Notes: ❖ Evernote, google docs ❖ Git: ❖ SourceTree, gitKraken, command line ❖ Documentation: ❖ dash ❖ Latex: ❖ Texpad, overleaf ❖ Communication: ❖ Slack, email, skype
13. python ❖ Excellent summary by JakeVDP ❖ Keynote on youtube
14. performance in python ❖ Often-overlooked: For day-to- day science, ❖ speed of development is primary ❖ speed of execution is often secondary
16. python and jupyter ❖ anaconda is the quasi-standard for scientific python ❖ Basically three different modes: ❖ ipython, fully interactively ❖ python myscript.py ❖ jupyter notebooks ❖ Excellent documentation, examples, blogs, books, etc. for all of this!
17. Wiki & Links ❖ Find all of the resources and much more here: ❖ https://github.com/Darksector326/CosmoCode