Required Textbooks:
Handbook of CCD Astronomy by Steve B. Howell
Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences (3rd ed) Bevington & Robinson
Suggested books:
- Numerical Recipes by Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling & Flannery
- Astrophysics I and II by Bowers & Deeming
- The observation and analysis of stellar photospheres by David Gray
- Astronomical Methods by Hale Bradt
- Practical Statistics for Astronomers by J.V. Wall and C.R. Jenkins
- Fundamental Astronomy by Hannu Karttunen et al.
- An Introduction To Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie
- Astronomical Observations by Gordon Walker

Syllabus; Homework Assignments; Important Class News

Uncalibrated I-band image of NGC7331 taken with the MLO 1-m telescope and CCD2001 Imager on 2004-10-23T05:55:29 (300 s exposure) by students in the Astr 680 Class. North is to the right and East is to the bottom (so this needs to be flipped and rotated to match the standard orientation).


Uncalibrated I-band images of HCG 92 taken on 2004-10-23 (120 s exposure) by the Fall 2004 Astr 680 class. Notice the overscan region and bad columns on the uncropped image. These are low-res gif images, with nowhere near the quality of the original fits file.

Helpful Guides and Links:
Linux and Fortran Programming:
Intro to Unix
FORTRAN Help
Starlink Guides

Graphics and Imaging (aka "data Visualization"):
PGPLOT a library of plotting subroutines.
Grace (aka "Xmgr" or "ace/gr") a standalone gui-driven plotting package.
gnuplot cenral and gnuplot FAQ (note: gnuplot is NOT affiliated with GNU nor the FSF projects)
gnuplot - brief maunal & tutorial site from Duke Univ.'s Civil & Envir. Engineering
MONGO User's Guidefrom John Tonry
Note: "SM" was formerly called "supermongo", but it is not an offshoot of "mongo", so the name has been changed.
Intro to SM (or supermongo) page from the ``Intro to Computing in Physics'' class web page at the Univ. of Utah.
SM manual the official SM manual from the authors of SM; see also the SM tutorial. And finally, more on SM.
DS9 an image display software package. This is the replacement for the aging SAOimage (and SAOtng) which are now officially considered obsolete and no longer supported by SAO.
(If anyone knows a good site for ximtool, please let me know.)

Astronomical Literature
ADS
Los Alamos/Cornell ArXiv Preprint Server
ApJ

Astronomical Databases & Tools
Skyview
SIMBAD
NED
Spectrophotometric Standard Stars (provided by ESO)
Landolt Equatorial Standards on line BVRI photometry of standard stars near the celestial equator by A. U. Landolt (1992 AJ 104, 340)
IR standards from ESO
A simple JD/civil date conversion utility from HEASARC.
A simple Energy/wavelength/frequency Converter from HEASARC
A total galactic HI column density nH calculator from HEASARC.

IRAF: Image Reduction and Analysis Facility:
IRAF homepage at NOAO.


Physical Constants, Time:
The CODATA Internationally recommended values of the Fundamental physical constants from the NIST site.
A simple JD-to-calendar date converter from the USNO
The current time from the US Naval Observatory & the NIST (java).