Welcome to LASTRO TP-IVa documentation!

The goal of this LASTRO practical work is, through the analysis of real data, to get a taste of how modern astrophysical observations are obtained and analysed. These include digital images obtained with the four 8.2m VLTs (Very Large Telescope) of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal (Chile) and with the NASA/ESA 2.4m Hubble Space Telescope. If weather (and sanitary restrictions) allow it, real observations will be organised, with the 60cm-telescope TELESTO from the Observatory of Geneva.

Sombrero Galaxy by HST

Planning and assistants

Each Monday at 9:00am, at EPH155 (in l’Ephémère building, close to Amphipôle and Biophore, map) there is a small presentation to introduce the current exercise and techniques needed to tackle them. Students are expected to spend on average 3 weeks per exercise. Assistants are available to help students all along the semester. There is one leading assistant per exercise (see table below). Students can come on Mondays inside the offices around Ephemere to discuss with the assistants. A Slack working space is setup to ask questions and get feedbacks from assistants and other students.

2023, autumn semester

Expected timescale

Leading assistants

Exercise 2

25/09 - 09/10

Javier Acevedo (javier.acevedobarroso@epfl.ch), Robin Tress (robin.tress@epfl.ch)

Exercise 1

16/10 - 30/10

Utsav Akhaury (utsav.akhaury@epfl.ch), Javier Acevedo

Exercise 3

06/11 - 20/11

Jiaxi Yu (jiaxi.yu@epfl.ch), Utsav Akhaury

Exercise 4

Not required this semester

Exercise 5

27/12 - 18/12

Robin Tress, Jiaxi Yu

All reports must be sent to frederic.courbin@epfl.ch on January 5, 2024.

An introduction to a widely used programming language

In astrophysics and cosmology research, almost all data processing and analysis is performed using the programming language Python. It is an easy-to-learn non-compiled object-oriented language, and has now become the standard also in a wide variety of fields. As such, a basic introduction to Python will be given, and the various exercises will allow the student to write better and more comprehensible codes.

Another standard tool is the LaTeX format, used in most of scientific fields to write journal letters and articles. An example template is given to the students, and their final report should be written in this format.

An overview of research in astrophysics and cosmology through exercises

Then a tour of the techniques in use by the astrophysical community is proposed, and illustrated through the study of a wide range of science areas, from the photometry of nearby stellar clusters, to the search for faint distant galaxies and clusters of galaxies. An introduction to numerical simulations, widely used in astrophysics, is also proposed. The goal is to give the student a quantitative feeling of what is possible and what is not with present-day instrumentation and simulations.

It is expected at the end of this 14-weeks introduction and training that the student is sufficiently well prepared to attack efficiently the scientific work to be done during the spring semester and during the master.