Astronomy: Celestial Bodies Data Science Module

Contributors: James Busch (GR), Garrett Scott ('22), Elisabeth Newton (Professor of Physics and Astronomy), Lorie Loeb (Professor of Computer Science, DIFUSE PI)

This module was developed through the DIFUSE project at Dartmouth College and funded by the National Science Foundation award IUSE-1917002.

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Module Objective

Introduce students to the way Astrophysicists manipulate data and perform analyses in Python with an emphasis on data visualization and plot interpretation.

Learning Objectives

1. Actively engage with a coding environment.
2. Analyze and compare astronomical data about different objects and/or from different observatories.
3. Interpret data visualizations in the context of course content.

Module Description

The module aims to introduce students to the way Astrophysicists manipulate data and perform analyses with an emphasis on data visualization and plot interpretation. Students use a sequence of python notebooks to explore, analyze astronomical data. This module uses python notebooks as its main tool and engages students in data analysis, visualization, and drawing conclusions.

Data

The module pyhton notebooks pull observatory data from the Gaia star luminosity data set, a celestial object data set, TESS data on exoplanets, and the Dartmouth stellar evolution database.

Platform

This module uses pyhton notebooks in Google CoLab for student work.

Module Outline and Timeline

Date	In/Out of Class	Assignment Description	Assignment Files (Linked to Repository Contents)
Week 1	In class	Introduction to python, using google colab	Colab documentation and start-up guide
Week 1	Out of class	Getting used to colab, looking at data from different observatories	Assignment 1
Week 3	Out of class	The Night Sky	Assignment 2
Week 5	Out of class	Orbits and Gravity	Assignment 3
Week 7	Out of class	Stellar Evolution	Assignment 4

Course Description

Stars and the Milky Way is an introductory astronomy course in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Dartmouth College. It is a general introduction to astronomy and assumes no particular student background but instructors expect that about a third of students will have some python or coding background.

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Week 9	Out of class

Student Expectations

ASTR15 is an introductory course and has no prerequisites, but the instructors observe that about a third of the students will have at least some familiarity with Python/coding.