Week 9: The Math Of Astronomy

Hello and welcome back to my blog! This week I completed my Yale course: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics. It was a very good overview of modern exoplanet science and the different methods of detection, and I would definitely recommend the course to those interested in learning more. I also completed my Python for Astronomers textbook which has greatly helped me learn how the EXOTIC code works so I can better explain it in my presentation and final deliverable. I’m still a bit new at coding so I don’t understand all of it but the text was easy to follow and very relevant to the particular code I’m working on. For the rest of this week and next week, I will be calculating the results of all of my light curves and compiling information on the implications of the data. I am using Transits and Occultations by Joshua N. Winn as my primary text along with help from Dr. Tanner to learn and apply the relevant equations with the data from my light curves.

I will use these equations and many more to characterize all the planets I have researched. That’s all for this week! Thank you for reading.