Data Analysis or Research Presentation Project
At the end of the semester, each student will give a 10 minute talk based on the results of a data analysis or literature review project. The topic and scope will be approved by the instructor ahead of time, as part of homework questions and through one-on-one meetings to discuss the project.
The project should touch on a topic covered in class and explore it (e.g., reducing X-ray data of a pulsar and measuring its spectrum and pulse period, or reading and synthesizing several papers on pulsar types/evolution). The presentation should explain what you did and why. A written report on your work will summarize your findings and constitute the majority of your grade.
The goal of the project is to expose you to high energy (likely X-ray) data and the nature of assoicated measurements and statistics. The project can follow several types:
- A replication of work in a scientific paper, such as extracting a spectrum from an observation and fitting it with various models. You would describe the steps taken for processing the data, demonstrating an understanding of why you took those steps, and evaluating the results of fitting the spectrum-how uncertainties were derived and what they mean, how well different models can be discriminated, etc.
- An evaluation of telescope characteristics and calibration. For example, X-ray telescope design usually results in variable point spread functions (PSFs) and sensitivity across the field of view (FOV), which is generally energy-dependent. These properties can be evaluated with real data and compared to online performance descriptions.
- A simulation of data to demonstrate some behavior that could be present, especially regarding a bias. For example, a more realistic demonstration of the bias described in HW03 problem 4, for light curve and spectral data, or how much miscalibration in the effective collecting area of a telescope will result in significant systematic uncertainties in the measurement of the temperature of a thermal bremsstrahlung spectrum.
For your sake, I encourage you to work with either Chandra or NuSTAR data, as they are fairly straightforward to analyze, and I can most easily provide technical help. I don't want you to struggle with learning the ins and outs of X-ray data analysis per se, but I do want you to get a feel for it. If you can install software on a personal computer, great, but access to servers with the software already installed is also available.
Useful/necessary resources for data analysis
- High Energy Astrophysics Software (HEASoft)
- X-ray Spectral Fitting Software (distributed with HEASoft)
- High Energy Astrophysics Data Archive (HEASARC)
- Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations
- Chandra Data Archive
Useful resources for identifying/finding papers
- Astrobites: Blog-like posts on recent papers
- ADS: Searchable paper database
- Astro-ph: Searchable preprint server of papers (no paywalls)
Useful resources for identifying/finding papers
To write up the written report of your project, either copy the overleaf latex template or download it (for working locally) from here: https://www.overleaf.com/read/prpmvvnxspps. Some other hints on using latex (e.g., adding equations) can be found here: https://www.overleaf.com/read/bgyffsqygsmh.
