Reflection Posts

An important tool for me this summer is going to be reflection. On a project as long-term and multi-faceted as the Gosnell Research Group’s investigation of X-ray and optical sources in NGC6819, consistently checking progress, considering methods, and making changes when they are due is as important as working hard on a daily basis. I hope to utilize this blog to reflect after each week this summer on what I did, what I learned, and what I hope to do in the future. As I tend to do, I messed this up right from the get-go and forgot to make one on Friday. However, last week is still in recent memory and I still will get something out of reflecting. So here I go.

My First Few Steps

My first week generally went like so: First two days: mess around on Github and try to figure out more about it, try to download huge amounts of hubble data, read about data reduction. Last three days: Do some X-ray source finding on hubble images, and read about photometry (and paint each afternoon with the paint shop).

I was able to do a lot more in the first two days as I worked 6-7 hours/day, while the last three I worked only about 3-4 due to my new job painting classrooms down the hall. It has been good for me to have the painting in my day to keep me scheduled and occupied, but I have to deal with the realities of only having half the time that Marta and Thom have to work on the research. This means I have to both pick things to do that I can do in the shorter amounts of time I have and also stay heartened about my usefulness to the project. I found myself towards the end of the week feeling less important to the project than Marta and Thom as I spent less time in the lab. This attitude is untenable, however, with the summer I plan to have: growing personally, being a great team member, and making my own contributions to our understanding of NGC 6819. I think that I can actually leverage my position in the group to bring fresh energy while I am working and help solve persistent problems as I will be more in and out of the lab than Marta and Thom. For me it will be important to view my half-time role positively as opposed to feeling less important and useful.

In terms of practical accomplishments in this first week, learning as much as we have about github is no small feat and I am happy to now know much more about how to collaborate online with the research group. I felt somewhat aimless once I was done with small beginning tasks, though, as the next steps weren’t altogether clear.

At our Friday meeting, however, it was helpful to hear from Dr. G that it is important to develop understanding in this part of the process. although there is a temptation to jump in and start messing with the data, that will ultimately lead us to results we won’t understand if we haven’t taken the time to understand the tools we will use. I like this idea, and take it as my goal for this week.

Next Steps

Photometry is the name of the game for me and Thom at the moment. We will use the photutils package to analyze the hubble data. The package will take some time to learn how to drive, but there is lots of documentation online about how to use it. My task this week is to learn all I can about photutils: how it works, what it does, what I need to do to get what I want out of it. Hopefully through this driver’s ed, I will be a licensed photutils operator in the near future, ready to drive my terminal window straight over to the twinkling lights of NGC 6819.