Tutorials

Set of Jupyter Notebooks, along with datafiles, to get started with Scientific Computing in Astronomy

How to setup Jupyter notebooks

1. Windows

2. MacOS

3. Linux distribution (includes Ubuntu)

   1. Installing Jupyter - Using Conda or Miniconda

   2. Installing Jupyter - Using python-pip (Try this only if you are comfortable with terminal)

How to use Jupyter notebooks

1. Opening the Notebooks

2. Jupyter Notebook Dashboard

3. Creating a new notebook document

4. Overview of the Notebook UI

5. Cell types

6. Modal Editor

   1. Edit Mode

   2. Command Mode

   3. Running Code

   4. Keyboard Navigation

   5. Mouse Navigation

   6. Cheat Sheet

Tutorial 1 : Basics of Python

• Basic syntax, and syntax for loops, conditional statements, and opening simple files, (lists, tuples and dictionaries)
• Parse a file and make a list containing the number of moons for each planet.

Tutorial 2 : Introduction to NumPy

• Numpy arrays, indexing, slicing.
• Parse file as above using numpy (np.where, for example).
• Beehive Cluster.

Tutorial 3 : Functions in Python

• Defining functions.
• Hubble Law, Number density of galaxies.

Tutorial 4 : Introduction to Matplotlib (Matplotlib I)

• Simple Plotting. Labels, colors, title, grid
• GW astronomy

Tutorial 5 : Introduction to Astropy and FITS format (Astropy I)

• Using Astropy.io to import datafiles, astropy.table.
• Take the data from a harder to parse data file.
• Introduction to fits files.

Tutorial 6 : Web Scraping

• Scrape web for some data (try to do this for constellations)
• Make an image of the constellation using RA, Dec or Mars in retrograde (simple scatter plot)

Tutorial 7 : Curve Fitting (SciPy I)

• Curve fitting
• Scrape data from Cepheids, and plot Period-Luminosity relation
• Frequency vs time inspiral

Tutorial 8 : Image Reduction

• Using Bias and Flats.
• Reducing an image of a popular target. (And further processing)

Tutorial 9 : Advanced Plotting (Matplotlib II)

• Subplots, and Using Object Oriented approach
• Make several HR diagrams, say, with different filters.
• Compare features, and observe that UV filters are good at filtering multiple stellar populations.

Tutorial 10 : Astropy Quantities (Astropy II)

• Using astropy quantities, make a black body spectra.
• Using filters (SDSS), find the instrumental magnitude of a star in different bands.
• Have a function which returns these values, given the temperature of a star.

Tutorial 11 : Classes in Python

• Make a class for a star and a filter.
• Rewrite the previous codes to make it more adaptable to changes.

Tutorial 12 : Time Domain Astronomy (SciPy II)

• Time Series analysis.
• Find a peak/Periodicity search.

Tutorial 13 : Coordinate Systems (Astropy III)

• Coordinate Systems and Time.
• Convert coordinates. Plot an analemma of the Sun. See how it changes with latitude.

Tutorial 14 : Differential Equations (SciPy III)

• Differential Equation solving. Scipy.integrate.solve_ivp.
• Solve differential equations for some system numerically.