New!

[Tim Brennan]

Hi Group!
 
So so so new to all of this, but I'm a 9th grade science teacher, and I have kids doing physical science through astronomy, which is where my background is.  At the end of the year, I have students choosing more individualized projects, and I'm guiding some of them towards image analysis.
 
Through the Global Telescope Network, we are able to get telescope time and choose objects, exposure times, and filters.  We did this last year, and realized that we were unable to do any processing of the images - to make a color composite image for example - and many of the software packages which do all of the work would appear to be quite expensive, so I asked to have ImageJ put on a few machines.  Now we are starting to think about projects, and I want to get a jump on things, so that I can get the kids doing what they want with the images.
 
Help! :)  Given the following, I'm wondering what steps you would advise me to take, and of course if there are astronomers out there, I'd love any specific help you can give me.
 
1. We would like to clean up images by taking darks, flats and bias frames, and doing the proper subtraction/adjustments.  I have worked with those kinds of techniques before, but it was 20 years ago using... I think it was Unix.
 
2.  I'm not too scared of programming... and wouldn't mind doing "warm-up" assignments to get familiar with the language.
 
3.  I have no idea what a 'plug-in' is... and haven't at this moment even opened up ImageJ on the computer...
 
4.  We would like to create color composite Images of nebulae.
 
5.  We'd like to do some photometry - using images of standard stars to calibrate things and measure the magnitudes of other stars in the field.  This would be to get B-V values for stars to do some color-magnitude work, and to measure the period of some variable stars - perhaps leading to period-luminosity relationships and finding distances to some clusters.
 
6.  I have java every morning... I have run Java applets on-line... and I know that "Java for Dummies" is an extremely popular book that has been checked out of my local library for months to come.  (Is this book worth buying?  Please forget that you are not Dummies when you answer that).  That is all I know about Java at the moment.
 
7.  I am not too proud to pass up someone saying "Here, take this!  It does what you want!"
 
I also have colleagues who have done some of this kind of work, but I'm curious to hear from the people that are using ImageJ often enough to warrant being on a listserv for it.  Thanks in advance for the advice  - I'm hopeful, given how collegial people have seemed as I have sat back and watched emails going back and forth between people on this list.
 
-Tim Brennan
The Northwest School
Seattle    

[Leonard Sitongia]

On Jan 24, 2012, at 1:27 PM, Tim Brennan wrote:

> Help! :)  Given the following, I'm wondering what steps you would advise me to take, and of course if there are astronomers out there, I'd love any specific help you can give me.

Hi Tim,

I routinely use ImageJ for processing astronomical images, for quick-look and figuring out algorithms.  It's very useful.  ImageJ is a great tool.

I assume that the images you have are in FITS format.  ImageJ can read simple FITS files, but not multi-extension FITS.  First, can you read the images?  You might need to write a plug-in to read the file format you have.

There are some resources out on the web for astronomy and ImageJ:
http://www.astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~hessman/ImageJ/Book/
http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/science/astronomy/jwest/reduction_recipe.pdf

I'll stop here for now.  Your questions might be answered or changed as you go.

==Leonard E. Sitongia
 High Altitude Observatory
 National Center for Atmospheric Research
 P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307  USA
 [hidden email]  voice: [phone]  fax: [phone]

[ctrueden]

Hi Tim & Leonard,

I am neither an astronomer nor teacher, so have not tried it myself, but
one project of possible interest is SalsaJ:

http://www.euhou.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=49&Itemid=185

It is a fork of ImageJ intended for teaching astronomy in the classroom,
which seems like a perfect fit here.

Regards,
Curtis


On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Leonard Sitongia <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Jan 24, 2012, at 1:27 PM, Tim Brennan wrote:
>
> > Help! :)  Given the following, I'm wondering what steps you would advise
> me to take, and of course if there are astronomers out there, I'd love any
> specific help you can give me.
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> I routinely use ImageJ for processing astronomical images, for quick-look
> and figuring out algorithms.  It's very useful.  ImageJ is a great tool.
>
> I assume that the images you have are in FITS format.  ImageJ can read
> simple FITS files, but not multi-extension FITS.  First, can you read the
> images?  You might need to write a plug-in to read the file format you have.
>
> There are some resources out on the web for astronomy and ImageJ:
> http://www.astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~hessman/ImageJ/Book/
> http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/science/astronomy/jwest/reduction_recipe.pdf
>
> I'll stop here for now.  Your questions might be answered or changed as
> you go.
>
> ==Leonard E. Sitongia
>  High Altitude Observatory
>  National Center for Atmospheric Research
>  P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307  USA
>  [hidden email]  voice: [phone]  fax: [phone]
>

[Bill Mohler]

 From a confirmed Dummy who learned Java from the book...
Yes, buy Java for dummies. It literally changed my life.


On 1/24/12 3:27 p.m., Tim Brennan wrote:

> Hi Group!
>
> So so so new to all of this, but I'm a 9th grade science teacher, and I have kids doing physical science through astronomy, which is where my background is.  At the end of the year, I have students choosing more individualized projects, and I'm guiding some of them towards image analysis.
>
> Through the Global Telescope Network, we are able to get telescope time and choose objects, exposure times, and filters.  We did this last year, and realized that we were unable to do any processing of the images - to make a color composite image for example - and many of the software packages which do all of the work would appear to be quite expensive, so I asked to have ImageJ put on a few machines.  Now we are starting to think about projects, and I want to get a jump on things, so that I can get the kids doing what they want with the images.
>
> Help! :)  Given the following, I'm wondering what steps you would advise me to take, and of course if there are astronomers out there, I'd love any specific help you can give me.
>
> 1. We would like to clean up images by taking darks, flats and bias frames, and doing the proper subtraction/adjustments.  I have worked with those kinds of techniques before, but it was 20 years ago using... I think it was Unix.
>
> 2.  I'm not too scared of programming... and wouldn't mind doing "warm-up" assignments to get familiar with the language.
>
> 3.  I have no idea what a 'plug-in' is... and haven't at this moment even opened up ImageJ on the computer...
>
> 4.  We would like to create color composite Images of nebulae.
>
> 5.  We'd like to do some photometry - using images of standard stars to calibrate things and measure the magnitudes of other stars in the field.  This would be to get B-V values for stars to do some color-magnitude work, and to measure the period of some variable stars - perhaps leading to period-luminosity relationships and finding distances to some clusters.
>
> 6.  I have java every morning... I have run Java applets on-line... and I know that "Java for Dummies" is an extremely popular book that has been checked out of my local library for months to come.  (Is this book worth buying?  Please forget that you are not Dummies when you answer that).  That is all I know about Java at the moment.
>
> 7.  I am not too proud to pass up someone saying "Here, take this!  It does what you want!"
>
> I also have colleagues who have done some of this kind of work, but I'm curious to hear from the people that are using ImageJ often enough to warrant being on a listserv for it.  Thanks in advance for the advice  - I'm hopeful, given how collegial people have seemed as I have sat back and watched emails going back and forth between people on this list.
>
> -Tim Brennan
> The Northwest School
> Seattle    .
>

[John Kielkopf]

Tim,

We use ImageJ for astronomy, both for research and in teaching.  Karen
Collins has a version called AstroImageJ  that has features for photometry
(it is used for measuring exoplanet transits) and a user interface that is
similar to SAOImage ds9. It will handle darks, bias and flats too, if you
have unreduced data.  It's available here --
http://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/astroimagej/index.html






On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Tim Brennan <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Group!
>
> So so so new to all of this, but I'm a 9th grade science teacher, and I
> have kids doing physical science through astronomy, which is where my
> background is.  At the end of the year, I have students choosing more
> individualized projects, and I'm guiding some of them towards image
> analysis.
>
> Through the Global Telescope Network, we are able to get telescope time
> and choose objects, exposure times, and filters.  We did this last year,
> and realized that we were unable to do any processing of the images - to
> make a color composite image for example - and many of the software
> packages which do all of the work would appear to be quite expensive, so I
> asked to have ImageJ put on a few machines.  Now we are starting to think
> about projects, and I want to get a jump on things, so that I can get the
> kids doing what they want with the images.
>
> Help! :)  Given the following, I'm wondering what steps you would advise
> me to take, and of course if there are astronomers out there, I'd love any
> specific help you can give me.
>
> 1. We would like to clean up images by taking darks, flats and bias
> frames, and doing the proper subtraction/adjustments.  I have worked with
> those kinds of techniques before, but it was 20 years ago using... I think
> it was Unix.
>
> 2.  I'm not too scared of programming... and wouldn't mind doing "warm-up"
> assignments to get familiar with the language.
>
> 3.  I have no idea what a 'plug-in' is... and haven't at this moment even
> opened up ImageJ on the computer...
>
> 4.  We would like to create color composite Images of nebulae.
>
> 5.  We'd like to do some photometry - using images of standard stars to
> calibrate things and measure the magnitudes of other stars in the field.
>  This would be to get B-V values for stars to do some color-magnitude work,
> and to measure the period of some variable stars - perhaps leading to
> period-luminosity relationships and finding distances to some clusters.
>
> 6.  I have java every morning... I have run Java applets on-line... and I
> know that "Java for Dummies" is an extremely popular book that has been
> checked out of my local library for months to come.  (Is this book worth
> buying?  Please forget that you are not Dummies when you answer that).
>  That is all I know about Java at the moment.
>
> 7.  I am not too proud to pass up someone saying "Here, take this!  It
> does what you want!"
>
> I also have colleagues who have done some of this kind of work, but I'm
> curious to hear from the people that are using ImageJ often enough to
> warrant being on a listserv for it.  Thanks in advance for the advice  -
> I'm hopeful, given how collegial people have seemed as I have sat back and
> watched emails going back and forth between people on this list.
>
> -Tim Brennan
> The Northwest School
> Seattle

--
John Kielkopf
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Tel:[phone]
Fax:[phone]