Here are links to a few tutorials and "cheat sheets" on stuff commonly
used in astrophysics research.
Give them a try if you need them, and
let me know if they are helpful.
Remember, they are NOT meant to be a
substitute for asking your advisor, mentor, fellow intern or program
directors for help, but only another resource to draw upon to get you
off to a good start.
This page is a work in progress, so if you find a particularly helpful resource, let me know and I'll add it to the list below.
LaTex is pretty dependent on the flavor, so let our example templates and the manuals " LaTeX: A Document Preparation System" by Lamport and "The LaTeX Companion" by Gossens et al. be your first guides. A couple other example tutorials that might be helpful and that look reasonably easy to navigate are A LaTeX Primer by Wilkins and An Introduction to LateX for the Harvard Math Department .
DS9 is a powerful imaging and analysis tool for astronomical data
in the "fits" format, as well for accessing information related to
your data from popular astronomy image servers, archives and
catalogues. Even if your project is theory oriented, you should want to
compare with data at some point, so it is a good tool to get to know.
The best way to learn about ds9 is to play with it a bit, and ask us
questions as you go along.
To invoke ds9 simply type "ds9
yourfile.fits & " (without the quotes of course).
Ask us for the location of a fun fits file to use.
Bill will give you a great overview of ds9's current capabilities in
his tutorial.
For formal documentation, check out
SAOImage DS9
Users Manual to get started and SAOImage DS9
Reference Manual for a more complete technical description of
all the features. These can also be accessed from ds9 itself, while
using the tool, by clicking the HELP button at the top right of the
ds9 menu bar.
X-ray spectral fitting is often done using a software package called Xspec. The Xspec User's Manual includes several 'walk through examples' as well as detailed information about the command syntax and models available for fitting X-ray spectral data.