WEEK 8: Moving Forward
Payton B -
This week gave me even more bugs and issues than last week.
On Monday, I almost finished analyzing the last stars. I was able to write the code to analyze the stars but, like last week, I was unable to run the code because of some issue. I talked to my mentor about this and hopefully, we will be able to fix this by next week. We also got period04 downloaded. This allowed me to get started on the next step.
On Tuesday, I began working with period04. I initially began inputting the wrong files into period04 and was confused as to what I was supposed to be doing, but I asked my mentor and she told me that I needed to input the file that was downloaded when I ran the code to analyze the stars. This is when my next issue arose. This is actually the same issue that bothered me on Monday. I could not run the code therefore the file that I needed to input into period04 was not downloaded. I spent some time messing around with it in an attempt to try and get around this issue, but I also did not want to mess anything up so I was unable to move forward again.
On Wednesday, I spent some time learning what period04 was doing. I am still quite confused, but from what I understand, we are trying to figure out if there is a pattern to how these stars change. In order to do this, we observe it, analyze the data, and send it through period04. Period04 then turns it into a Fourier transform. A Fourier transform is a process used with things like speech recognition, noise reduction, signal processing, and RADAR. It is a very complicated process but the best way to describe what it does is it is like unmixing a mixed bottle of paints. What it does is separate a complex wave that is hard to read and understand into the sum of lots of easy-to-understand sine waves. It is almost like we are turning our star observations into sound and then trying to find what is special about the sound or if there is a pattern to it.
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