UCO/Lick Observatory

Daniel Magnes Popper

Observational Astronomy Workshop

October 18 - October 23, 2023

Lick Observatory, Mt Hamilton, CA

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Workshop Materials

All materials required for the workshop activities are located here for reference and download. They are also available for download on the workshop Google Drive. If you have difficulty downloading materials, contact the Support Astronomers for assistance.

Workshop Poster

Participant List (updated 2023-10-11)


Observing Logsheets

Nickel Logsheet 2023-10-20 through 2023-10-22

Kast Logsheet 2023-10-21 through 2023-10-22

CAT Logsheet 2023-10-21 through 2023-10-22


Lecture Notes

Introduction to Observational Astronomy

Introduction to CCD Astronomy

Introduction to Near InfraRed Astronomy

Introduction to Adaptive Optics

Night Sky and Public Education Resources


Observation Planning

Observing Planning Worksheet

Observing Planning Resources

Project Descriptions

Exposure Times and Limiting Magnitudes


Data Reduction

There are two data reduction activies. Direct imaging data reduction using Python and spectroscopic data reduction using IRAF (and a little Python).

Direct Imaging Data Reduction

Workshop participants should download/unzip the 'Data Reduction Notebooks' file below. Alternatively, the most up-to-date version of the software will always be available on github. If you are not using Anaconda/Jupyter, you'll want to download the PDF instead, so that you can copy/paste directly into ipython

Python 3:
Data Reduction Notebooks
Data Reduction PDF

Nickel Data sets:

If you have a recent M1 or M2 Mac and can't get DS9 to work, the following Jupyter Notebook gives a basic example of image display: Python FITS file image display Alternatively, you can use an on-line version of DS9: https://js9.si.edu.


Spectroscopic Data Reduction

Data Reduction Setup

Spectral Data Reduction Tutorial

How to make and edit File Lists from the command line

Calibration Arc Spectra , more sample spectra are available in the on-line Kast manual.

Kast Data Sets:

For the ambitious student that wants to try reducing Echelle spectrograph data:

The following are not strictly necessary for the workshop, but are useful for Lick Observatory data reduction.

Python Scripts:
fixbadCCDcols.py
overscanLickObsP3.py