Variability of the Mid-IR Sky Current Research Activities

Variability of the Mid-IR Sky Proposal

Here is the link to our Spring 2010 proposal http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/teacher_research/r4-variab/variabProposal.pdf

Variability of the Mid-IR Sky Summer visit

We will be arriving on Thursday Aug 5, departing Aug 9 in hopes of working the three full days of Aug 6, 7 and 8. CLICK HERE for details

Generating Light Curves - APT and Excel

You can find info to help you practice using APT to generate light curves on this page.

Standard Deviation for Dummies

Our Astronomers said it would be important for us to understand standard deviation. We found the button on Excel that calculates it for us, but doesn't really explain what it is. Here's an explanation and example.

Standard deviation is a statistical measure of spread or variability. The standard deviation is tells you how closely the data are clustered around the average. We want to use the aperture and background subtraction settings that give us the smallest standard deviation for a star that is not varying. Our varying stars will of course have large standard deviations because they ARE varying.

Formula:

Standard Deviation standard deviation formula

where Σ = Sum of X = Individual score M = Mean (average) of all scores N = Sample size (Number of scores)

Example: Find the Standard deviation of 3,2,1,1,and 3

Step 1: Calculate the mean (average) and deviation.

X	M	(X-M)	(X-M)2
3	2	1	1
2	2	0	0
1	2	(-1)	1
1	2	(-1)	1
3	2	1	1

Step 2:Find the sum of (X-M)2 1+0+1+1+1 = 4

Step 3:N = 5, the total number of values.Find N-1. 5-1 = 4

Step 4:Now find Standard Deviation using the formula. √4/√4 = 1

Individual School Pages

Communicating on Wiki!!!

Wiki will tell you when anyone makes an edit or comment to any page if you

-log in, click on my preferences, put your whole name in for your signature if you want, check off all of the boxes at the bottom to turn on the email function
-go to the pages you want to "watch" and click on on the Watch tab, you'll get an email if there is a change to these pages
-watch your practice page and everyone elses practice pages for now so you know any of us make a comment or put up something new
-Please make comments using the discussion tab on anything and everything right now!
-if you feel the urge to make the comment on the actual page, that's ok for any pages under Variability of the Mid IR Sky seeing that these are our pages, but if you comment on the main coolwiki, use the discussion page.

Lincoln-Way North High School in Frankfort, Illinois

Teacher - Peggy Piper - Students - Joey R. - Rebecca R. - Justin C.

Here are our light curves with standard deviations for the three test stars using Source Model B.
From top to bottom in each graph, they are stars #1, #2, and #3.

Mrs. P Organization points

1. change the order of these images so smallest aperature 1st
2. look in working data files and list your standard deviations for each star
3. would be nice if they were all the same scale:)
4. the big white space can be cropped out in paint I believe

Mrs. P Question to you - which aperature background should we choose? Why?

Rebecca's Data for Aperture 5, Background 5 10

Joey's Data for Aperture 3, Background 10 20
Joey's Data for Aperture 10, Background 12 20

Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois

Media:APT_star_1_and_2.xls‎
Teacher - Rich DeCoster Student - Alexander Student - Aneesh

North Middle School, Great Falls, Montana

click on title above to get page to edit

Teacher - Beth Thomas Student - Drew B. Student - Dallas F.

Summer Discussion Topics

Variable Stars

http://aavso.org/vstar/

Our Glorious Leaders

Most Definitely a couple of Cool Dudes

Here is link to ‘‘DARK MATTER’’ IN ACCRETION DISKS by Steve Howell and Don Hoard that is of interest

Other items

This is Rich. I hope I am not causing confusion. It is 11:15 am CST on Friday Jan. 22, 2010. I am trying to see what this does, since I have "editing" status here. Is this something we use instead of email, or is it a place to create documents that we edit together? Rich ps-Should something like this be in the "discussion" tab rather than the "article" tab?

Hi Rich - no, you're not causing confusion, you're doing it exactly right! These pages under "current research activities" are really sort of "shared white boards". The other half of the wiki (under "research tools") are more articles, and in those cases, yes, questions should go into the discussion pages. I copied some headers in here, but please see some of the "current research activity" pages for the other current teams to see how they are using their pages. (e.g., cg4's page) Oh, and you can use this for whatever you want -- proposal preparation, conversation, sharing plots, brainstorming, etc. --Rebull 13:12, 22 January 2010 (PST)