New Sunday, new post!
A lot of people I know are pretty amazed when I tell them that I'm working on a project where I'm analyzing data from the biggest world's observatories and they ask me how did I get to such a project, how did I get those data or how did I manage to analyze them. (My project can be found in one of my previous posts.)
Even you have the possibility to get data from world's biggest observatories sch as ESO VLT
The truth is that this work is basically very simple and could be managed by nearly anyone with computer and internet. The worst part on working on any project is to choose the topic and to get the idea. Just after you have got it, everything is much easier. This post is not about the best way how to choose topic because I have really big problems with that myself but rather about some possibilities you will have when you decide to work on an astronomical project.
First of all, you need to understand the theory behind process or object you want to observe. It can be really boring to read lots of papers dealing with similar topic but it is the crucial part of scientific work. If you haven't known about arxiv yet you haven't known about one of the best archive of scientific papers in physics. You can find here many relevant papers or inspiration for you work.
You think you won't end up with this mess but when you start studying theory behind project you just can't avoid it.
From the theory, you need to decide what kind of data you will use and which objects you will observe. You are probably not observer so you will need to find suitable data in science archives and you will be limited by existing observations. For this reason, it is a good idea to choose more targets than you will need and than find best observations.
The next step is to find the best source of your data - science archive you will get data from. In the following link you can find (probably not complete) list of Science archives of the biggest ground and space observatories - software means if there is any specialized program in which data can be processed and analyzed. NOTE - if there is no software written, there is no recommended software on the archive webpage. It is m own list and and I am still working on it (if you have any suggestion what I should include in it let me know about it).
If you are lucky you will find wanted data after a few minutes of browsing. Before downloading them, you want to check header of all scientific files and inspect some important keyword such as exposition time or more specific ones for special instruments (it will be much easier after the first reduction).
After that, you can download data into your computer and the fun with data reduction can begin. Very useful information about data reduction are at the webpage of each science archive (but you have to look for them really hard).
Hopefully, you will find this post (at least) a little inspirational. If I had information like this earlier I would start with similar projects in much younger age that I did.
In case of any questions feel free to contact me.
PS: The answer for my question in the title is that I have found someone who has inspired me and showed me whole new world behind projects like this. I am talking about my friends, Michaela Brchnelová and Braňo Hakala (who was also my consultant) and I am truly thankful for their inspiration.
Have a nice day
and also life.
Jakub
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