Today was the first confusing day of the internship. After the brief meeting, in which we discussed everyone's progress, I finished the Python introduction course. Afterwards, I started to experiment with the Python IDLE software; with help from the internet, I was able to program a dice rolling program.
As I was done with Python before lunch, I spent the rest of the morning reading the textbook so that Alexa could have access to a computer for her Python course. For lunch I had an amazing pizza, although we were surprised by rain on the way back to the lab.
After lunch, Matt explained my job in the big research program. In short, I will use Python and IDL to go through a list of 100,000 to 200,000 stars, finding those that have entries of 12+ different epochs (time of data collection). For each of those stars I will find the standard deviation of radiation emission magnitudes of the epochs; using those numbers I can create a histogram. The histogram will be useful in identifying AGB (almost dead) stars, from which we eventually plot light curves that are used for future research.
However, I encountered two problems. One, the data is so enormous that I can only read bits at a time on Windows NotePad, which severely limits what I can do to make the data more readable. In addition, my knowledge of IDL is limited, so I do not know how to import the data so I can sort through it (sorting through by hand would take too much time). Luckily, one of my friends in Cleveland can help me out, as well as Matt who will hopefully be able to introduce me to IDL tomorrow.
As I was done with Python before lunch, I spent the rest of the morning reading the textbook so that Alexa could have access to a computer for her Python course. For lunch I had an amazing pizza, although we were surprised by rain on the way back to the lab.
After lunch, Matt explained my job in the big research program. In short, I will use Python and IDL to go through a list of 100,000 to 200,000 stars, finding those that have entries of 12+ different epochs (time of data collection). For each of those stars I will find the standard deviation of radiation emission magnitudes of the epochs; using those numbers I can create a histogram. The histogram will be useful in identifying AGB (almost dead) stars, from which we eventually plot light curves that are used for future research.
However, I encountered two problems. One, the data is so enormous that I can only read bits at a time on Windows NotePad, which severely limits what I can do to make the data more readable. In addition, my knowledge of IDL is limited, so I do not know how to import the data so I can sort through it (sorting through by hand would take too much time). Luckily, one of my friends in Cleveland can help me out, as well as Matt who will hopefully be able to introduce me to IDL tomorrow.