Writing goes here.
Sunset over Coquimbo from La Serena's Beach.
My name is A.J. Carver. I am a 2005 NOAO CTIO REU student. I am studying cataclysmic variable stars with Linda Schimdtobreick and Alan Whiting.
03/24/05 I gave my REU talk,"A Search for Superhumps in Possible SW Sextantis Stars", (the presentation was created using Microsoft Office Powerpoint for Mac 0SX, please in the AURA conference room of the Gemini South building. The presentation was created using Microsoft Office Powerpoint for Mac 0SX, please e-mail me if you have compatability problems. The talk went well.
03/07/05 Remotely attended Knut Olsen's talk, "Tracing M31's Bulge and Disk Stellar Populations with Gemini".
03/02/05 Attended a talk, "Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes (PROMPT)", by Daniel Reichart (Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
03/01/05 An IBVS paper, "The dwarf nova RX Volantis in Quiescence", has been accepted. My 21st birthday was sometime between today and yesterday. Thank you for making my birthday special: everyone at the surprise party, who called, who sent emails or cards, and who wished me well. Attended the talk, "Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy of Circumstellar Disks", by Dr. Adwin Boogert.
02/28/05 I think my phone number is working - thanks Lucia!
02/24/05 Attended talks by Alan ( "Introduction to Cosmology"), Susan Ridgeway ("The Evolution and Luminosity Dependence of Quasar Host Galaxies"), and Steven Margheim ("Precision Stellar Abundances and Beyond").
02/17/05 Happy 20th Birthday Claire! Yo compre zapatos de baby futbol. Knut Olsen gave a talk about stellar populations. 02/11/05 My telephone information needs to be more specific; I will update it soon. 02/08/05 Happy 21st Birthday Dylan. 02/02/05 This website goes online. At coffee the REU students introduced themselves and their projects. 02/01/05 Returned from observing on the .9m at Cerro Tololo. 01/17/05 Arrived in Chile.
Week 8
03/07/05 txdump'd observation times and fluxes from .mag files for each of the five stars in night two's AH-Men field. Averaged the flux of the reference stars. Calculated the relative magnitude of AH-Men, and the star with magnitude closest to AH-Men, to the average. Plotted the lightcurve of AH-Men, and star two, relative to the average. Began defining regions to phot for night four AH-Men data.
Week 7
03/06/05 Created files that list all the images in each of my four groups. Used imexamine, and the a key, to determine the pixel locations of five stars, with magnitudes similar to AH-Men, for each group. I created associated coordinate files. Used phot to determine the magnitudes of the stars on each image. txdump'd the magnitudes to text files, then made a quick plot of the light curve. Variations observed. I will post a plot soon.
03/05/05 Looked at AH-Men images from night one to determine how much the telescope drifted around the field of view during the evening. I decided to break the images into four groups to phot: b077, b078-b089, b090-b373, and b389-b519. Copied object images to a directory named phot.
03/04/05 Combined dome flats for each night. Divided flats by each other to determine if they could be combined; based on the images, imstat, and histograms I've decided I can combine all the dome flats for the observing run. Used flatcombine to combine all the flats, named the resultant image FlatMaster.imh. Subtracted ZeroMaster from all object images, then divided by FlatMaster.imh, using quadproc. BASIC IMAGE REDUCTION COMPLETE.
03/03/05 I used the IRAF command zerocombine to combine the zeros from each night. I divided the zeros by each other to determine if they could be combined; based on the images, imstat, and histograms I've decided I can combine the zeros. Used ZeroCombine to combine all zeros; I named the resultant image ZeroMaster.imh. Started to combine flats.
03/02/05 Learned some shell scripting. Wrote a shell script to change the names of the night 2 images from *.imh.fits to *.fits. Ran rfits on night 2 to convert .fits files to .imh files. quadproc'd night 2. Used hedit to change the imagetyp in the headers of all images to the appropriate type, either flat, zero, or object. Used zerocombine to combine night 2 and night 3 zeros.
03/01/05 quadproc'd night6, night7, night5, night4, night3. quadproc takes lots of time. NOTE: .fits files and .imh files in the same directory will confuse IRAF; it is smart to separate them into different directories. I choose to make a fits folder and move the .fits files into it. NOTE: quadproc calls ccdproc, so it is smart to unlearn ccdproc before using quadproc. NOTE: Use imdel command in IRAF to remove .imh files - do not use rm in the terminal.
02/28/05 Converted .fits files to .imh files, for every night, using IRAF command rfits. Examined bias and flat images to confirm that trim section in the image header was correct; I used the IRAF command
Address
A.J. Carver
REU Student
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
CTIO/AURA Inc.
Casilla 603
La Serena, Chile
Telephone and Email
56.51.205200 (reception)
56.51.205258 (casa 13)
acarver@wisc.edu
reu2@ctiosz.ctio.noao.edu
