How to Work With Astronomical Data: A Tutorial

Markus Pössel posted the review paper A Beginner’s Guide to Working with Astronomical Data. It’s a comprehensive overview of processing astronomical images, spectra, and catalog data with application software and the Python programming language. The paper also covers simulations and simulated data.

The value of this paper is it distills into a single resource a lot of material available elsewhere, and provides guidance on getting started with the major categories of astronomical data.

Comments

Post a Comment

All comments are moderated and they are published only if approved by the blog owner. Comments that are spammy, trolling, hateful, malicious, or otherwise inappropriate will be removed without notice at the sole discretion of the blog owner.

Popular posts from this blog

My Favorite Image Annotation Android App

Image
I loved Skitch, the handy little image annotation Android app Evernote discontinued in 2015. It took a while but I eventually found a full replacement that’s even better than Skitch.

Annotate - Image Annotation Tool is a vector image annotation and editing app for Android. It provides drawing tools and shapes that cover the most common annotation needs, as well as a few advanced ones such as highlighting text or image areas and creating magnified insets of specific details. These features are packaged in a clean and efficient user interface that doesn’t get in the way of quick annotations.

Here’s what an annotated screenshot looks like in the app on my Pixel 2 XL phone.


Annotate’s key feature is it’s a vector drawing app, not a bitmap one, which lets you easily edit already created graphical elements such as changing their sizes and positions. This is essential as in most cases working on an image requires some iterations and tweaks before saving the final version.

As a bonus Annotate …
Read more

Feedly's AI Assistant Misses the Point of RSS

Feedly is testing an AI assistant that short-lists selected articles based on user preferences and machine learning.

However, such an algorithmic recommendation feature misses the point of RSS and feed readers, the ability to skim all the headlines of a feed in chronological order. If I wanted algorithms to organize my feeds I might as well use a newsreader like Google News or a social platform like Twitter.

With features like this Feedly is apparently trying to differentiate, attract more users, or pivot. But they’re neglecting the core reading experience. For example, it took Feedly several years to update the Android app and some of its usability issues still have not been addressed. And search, one of the key features of paid plans, is so ineffective I gave up on it long ago.
Read more

Leanpub and Lean Publishing

Image
I published my book Space Apps for Android to Leanpub, which, unlike other self-publishing platforms, focuses on works in progress rather than completed books.


This is unusual and unique in the self-publishing space and, since Leanpub is less known than the major players like Amazon KDP and Apple Books, I often have to explain how Leanpub works when discussing it with other authors. Therefore, I decided to put together this overview I can refer to.

Lean Publishing Leanpub bears its name from Lean Publishing, a process for publishing works in progress inspired by the Lean Startup methodology.

A book is seen as the product of a startup, often a Minimum Viable Product. You write and release successive improved versions of the book, get feedback from readers, and iterate. Although Leanpub is genre-agnostic, the process is best suited to non-fiction and technical works on topics that change frequently, such as computing and technology, or that you plan to keep up to date.

An advantage of L…
Read more