Ay218: Precision Photometry
(2009, Spring Term)

Instructors: L. A. Hillenbrand & S. R. Kulkarni

Participants: Tim Morton, Samuel Lee, Mansi Kasliwal, Ann Marie Cody, Aaron Wolf, Michele Bannister, Megan Schwamb, Nick Law, Eran Ofek, Jessica Lu, Thomas Ader.

When: Every Tuesday & Thursday, 11am to 12:30pm
Where: 273 Cahill (Tuesday) & 204 Cahill (Thursday) should we change to 211?

ROUGH SYLLABUS

REFERENCE MATERIAL

1. Session: March 31. (LAH) Astero- & Helio- seismology
2. Session: April 2. (LAH) Stellar Rotation
3. Session: April 7. (SRK) Introduction to planetary transits. [ presentation ]
   For next session:
   • Derive and explain Equations 2.1-2.6 from Winn 2008 Review (on the black board). Understand the sensitivity of experimental errors to inferred quantities.
   • Read False Positives
   • Read A Lack of Planets in 47 Tucanae
   • Read Super Wasp  |  Hat observations of Kepler field  |  Hatnet observations of one field
4. Session: April 9. (SRK) Ground-based Searches: Pitfalls & Prizes Talk by G. Bakos
5. Session: April 14. (Cody) Photometry Basics
   
6. Session: April 16. (Cody) Photometry ==> Precision Photometry -- DEFERRED DUE TO JURY DUTY; INSTEAD:
   • Kepler first-light press release and images out today
   • Review of the reference/reading list (see link near top, above)
   • Software for modelling seismology and planetary transits. Download and explore the codes here
   
   
7. Session: April 21. Field Trip to Missions for Exoplanets: 2010-2020 (April 21-23, 2009 You are expected to attend the first-day session on transits (1430-1730), take notes, and be able to pontificate during the next class.
8. Session: April 23.
   • (Cody) Photometry ==> Precision Photometry [notes-2]
   • Discussion of Tuesday's field trip
9. Session: April 28. (Riddle) Multi-site photometry and Time Sampling [presentation]
10. Session: April 30. (Palomar Science Meeting in Hameetman Aud.) You should attend the 10:30 am talk on PTF by Nick Law which is relevant to the course. Also, as class participants Kasliwal and Morton are speaking in the same session, it is unlikely we will be able to have class on Thursday. On Friday, Cody is speaking at 11:20am and will cover relevant course material.
11. Session: May 5.
    • (Ofek) A New Precision Photometry Calibration Technique
    • (SRK) Microlensing introduction
12. Session: May 7. (SRK) Microlensing applied
13. Session: May 12. (Chernoff) Microlensing and cosmic strings
14. Session: May 14. (SRK) CoRoT introduction
15. Session: May 19. (Plavchan) CoRoT Time Series and Period Finding Algorithms [presentation] and [official CoRoT data documentation]
16. Session: May 21. TBD
17. Session: May 26. (LAH) Kepler introduction
18. Session: May 28. (SRK)

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    Links to Projects:
    • GONG
    • SONG
      
    • MOST
    • CoRoT
    • Kepler
      
    • WASP

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