Week 1: Still Down To Earth For Now
Edward A -
Hi everyone! I have just finished my very first week of this project and…there was not much space-related stuff…yet. This was expected though. I knew that before I could get into all the space data, I’d first have to get familiar with the tools I’d be using.
I spent this week with one of Dr. Richardson’s students, Becca. She introduced me to the program we’ll be using called Jupyter, a web-based document and coding hybrid program that is primarily used to organize data. While this program, to my knowledge, supports multiple programming languages, I will be using Python for coding the collected star data. I spent most of my time familiarizing myself with Jupyter since this is my first time using Juypter let alone a web-based coding program, and honestly, my first time coding in years. As I get more and more familiar with Jupyter, I hope to begin learning some coding basics next week.
The other half of what went into my efforts this week was planning. We discussed how we’ll try to coordinate with one of Embry Riddle’s astronomy clubs so we can perhaps join them for a night and use the telescopes at the observatory. I’m looking forward to that. We’re also planning on joining in on some of Dr. Richardson’s astronomy lectures. I went to one at the Embry Riddle Planetarium on Wednesday where we learned about the coordinate systems used for space observation. It was helpful to get an idea of the three systems used, Earth’s rotation, the sun’s path in the sky, and where we face the galaxy. We also made sure to coordinate so that I could join in on some of Becca and Dr. Richardson’s private meetings so that I can listen in on the discussion that goes on about the LBF data collection and code we make.
All in all, despite not much space going on this week, I understand this is all a part of the process of preparing to do some astronomy research. I’m going to bear with it and look forward to what’s to come. Thanks for reading; I’ll check in again next week!
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