Polishing the programs

I have spent a lot of time this week playing with the three programs that perform aperture photometry. Really the source detection program has taken the most time for me to figure out. Background detection is fairly straightforward comparatively and once there is an accurate source list, aperture photometry is just a matter of counting inside an annulus around each source. I enjoyed adding helpful elements to the programs like numbering of sources and output saved figures and text files.

Next Week?

I just downloaded FLC files to analyze next week with the black box photometry program that we will use for photometry. I am looking forward to learning how to use it and getting some results. I think it will be a big new challenge when we get a bunch of data out of the program and have to interpret what it means.

We also have to reduce DIAFI images eventually. This could be quick, but may take longer depending on how quickly we pick up the astrodrizzling. For the sake of quality photometry it would be nice if the black-box PSF program works for the DIAFI images as well as the HST images, however, I would also be excited about using some of our aperture photometry codes to analyze the DIAFI data.

How it’s going

This week has been rewarding to do more coding and get more results. Although the collaboration in the group has been minimal thus far, I have definitely saved myself a lot of time by checking out how Thom did something that I am trying to figure out (like making images post to my blog) and I look forward to making our collaboration more active when we are working on the same data next work beginning to get into the meat of the project. I am also really excited to be able to combine our data with Marta’s work on astrometry.

I think this week I finally started to get a sense of what astrophysics research looks like. It is slow and sometimes tedious, but it is active. There is a lot of troubleshooting and a lot of googling. I like the problem solving that is inherent in this kind of work. I like the self-sufficiency and the constant learning.

I think I can continue to get better at identifying when I hit a roadblock and taking a break. I also should be taking more small breaks during the day to keep myself more fresh and efficient. In general I have been really happy with this week and hope that future weeks go like this one!