Astrophysics 🪐

Usage Requirements: Fairly strong internet connection, decent graphics processing for downloadable software.

Using either the web-based interactive or the downloadable application, explore the night sky using this well-known software detailing the celestial sphere. Great for outreach, education, amateur astronomy, and anyone who wants to take a zoomed-in look at the night sky. Use this tool to determine exactly what the sky will look like at a specific location and time and to gain an interactive understanding of how to use popular astronomical coordinate systems. Stellarium allows you to chart magnitude, position, and other physical properties of almost all astronomical objects.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University

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Usage Requirements: Strong internet connection.

Universe Monitor is a free public website created by Dave Owen, AKA "Space Dave" of Te Awamutu, New Zealand. Owen is also the creator of the Te Awamutu Space Centre, a space museum and education center. The website contains live feeds, video, CGI visualizations, text reports, etc. from various sources, such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA Earth Observatories, NOAA, ISS, etc, and includes recent space news, launches, and random astronomical facts. It is accessible from any device. Dave Owen writes that anyone is able to access the website for educational purposes, as well as set up public displays for science museums, observatories, and schools. To help keep the website ad-free, one can support their Patreon and learn more about the service on their about page.

Contributor: Robert J. Mailliard, Indiana University - Bloomington

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Usage Requirements: Works best on Linux, but also available on MacOS and Windows

How do astronomers process, analyze, and display the electromagnetic data they collect through telescopes from astronomical objects? One of the most common software for this purpose is SAODS9, a product of theChandra X-Ray Center (CXC). This software requires astronomical data to be contained in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) files, which is the standard among astronomers. NASA has collected public FITS files for processing here and more are available onMAST. More information on other image viewers is provided here.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University

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Usage Requirements: Fairly strong internet connection, paid subscription.

Slooh is a powerful online platform that allows educators and amateur astronomers remotely access telescopes in Chile, the Canary Islands, and Australia. Simply select a target & telescope, queue a scheduling block, adjust preferences, and watch as your research-grade image is captured. It is a brilliant, interactive way to explore the cosmos. Slooh hosts a variety of educational events and more advanced research options (have your data exported as FITS files for more detailed examination) and a constant stream of observations is available to watch in real-time. While the service comes with a price, I helped use this platform for Purdue University's physics and astronomy outreach program and I can personally attest it is worth the investment if you're strongly interested in amateur astronomy but are overwhelmed with the mechanics/cost of a full personal telescope.

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University

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Usage Requirements: TOPCAT requires Java environment to run. It can be used with or without an internet connection, but an internet connection is required if you want to use its database searching capabilities.

From their website "TOPCAT is an interactive graphical viewer and editor for tabular data. Its aim is to provide most of the facilities that astronomers need for analysis and manipulation of source catalogues and other tables, though it can be used for non-astronomical data as well. It understands a number of different formats, both astronomically important (FITS, VOTable, CDF) and general purpose (CSV, ASCII, Parquet), and more formats can be added. It is especially good at interactive exploration of large (multi-million row, lots of columns) tables. It handles the following file types (list from their website): FITS BINTABLE (binary table) or TABLE (ASCII table) extensions, VOTables in any of the format variants (TABLEDATA, FITS, BINARY, BINARY2) or versions, ASCII tables in a number of variations, CDF files, Comma-Separated Values (CSV), Enhanced Character-Separated Values (ECSV), Results of SQL queries on relational databases, Parquet files, IPAC format, AAS Machine-Readable Tables, HAPI streams, Feather files, GBIN files. It offers a variety of ways to view and analyse tables, including a browser for the cell data themselves, viewers for information about table and column metadata, and facilities for sophisticated interactive 1-, 2-, 3- and higher-dimensional visualisation, calculating statistics and joining tables using flexible matching algorithms. Using a powerful and extensible Java-based expression language new columns can be defined and row subsets selected for separate analysis. Table data and metadata can be edited and the resulting modified table can be written out in a wide range of output formats. It is a stand-alone application which works quite happily with no network connection. However, because it uses Virtual Observatory (VO) standards, it can cooperate smoothly with other tools, services and datasets in the VO world and beyond. The program is written in pure Java (except for optional Parquet I/O libraries) and available under the GNU General Public Licence, though some of the library code is LGPL. Source code is available at https://github.com/Starlink/starjava. It has been developed mostly in the UK within various UK and Euro-VO projects (Starlink, AstroGrid, VOTech, AIDA, GAVO, GENIUS, DPAC) and under PPARC and STFC grants. Its underlying table processing facilities are provided by the related packages STIL and STILTS. In my experience, it is an excellent resource for handling large data tables, and it is very straightforward to use.

Contributor: Prof. Jeffrey Gerber, Purdue University

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Language Requirement(s): Python. Usage Requirements: Python-compatable IDE or Jupyter Notebooks

Astropy is an all-in-one Python package focused on helping astronomers/astrophysicists navigate and transform large and small datasets. It allows users to easily work with numerous types of coordinate systems, constants, units, dates and times, and models and fitting. The package makes it easy to create, modify, and interface with FITS files, a common file type for working with astronomical data. Astropy is a must-have package for astronomers of all experience levels working in Python.

Contributor: Ethan Pinarski, Purdue University

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Language Requirement(s): Python. Usage Requirements: Python-compatable IDE or Jupyter Notebooks

Altaipony is used to analyze flaring data from Kepler, K2, and Tess missions. It has built-in functions that lessen the noise of photometric data and identify flares from the normalized data. It’s completely free and the data from these missions can be pulled fromMASTthrough Altaipony. It also works with target pixel files! (andLightkurvedoes all of this as well).

Contributor: Grace Cassidy, Purdue University

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Language Requirement(s): Terminal, Bash, Fortran 90. Usage Requirements: Ubuntu Linux setup for windows, or IOS alternative, git packages

MESA is a hydrodynamic code that simulates stars, black bodies, and supernovae remnants. It is often used to simulate stars along the main sequence. The applications are wide in astrophysics and nuclear physics. You can use it to simulate the life and conditions of just about any star or black body you want. MESA also hosts a yearlysummer school; past summer schools have their materials publishedonline.

Contributor: Aydian Brown, Purdue University

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Language Requirement(s): Terminal C-Based Language. Usage Requirements: Ubuntu Linux setup for windows or IOS alternative

DISCO is a moving-mesh hydrodynamics code that simulates gases moving and evolving at its core. This can be applied to any problem in astrophysics and broader applications for other hydrodynamic/fluid dynamic problems. For example, one could simulate a pulsar or a fluid-based experiment in a lab. The basics are set up for you in templates and you can create any fluid dynamic simulation you want simply by utilizing a little basic C and reading the source code.

Contributor: Aydian Brown, Purdue University

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Language Requirement(s): Python. Usage Requirements: Python-Compatable IDE, Jupyter Notebook

galpy allows the user to model galactic dynamics or any large-scale system in a gravitaitonal potential. With plenty of examples and documentation, users can plot rotation curves and integrate orbits (plot object paths over time).

Contributor: Amelia Binau, Indiana University - Bloomington

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Language Requirement(s): None. Usage Requirements: Web-based; only internet connection and/or local storage required.

Spectra, images, photometry. Through their extensivecatalog, the Space Telescope Science Insitute allows simple querying of mass collections of astronomical data spanning missions such as JWST, Hubble, TESS, and more, including ground-based observations. Select a mission/enter the name of an astronomical target and begin querying.

Contributor: Grace Cassidy, Purdue University

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