General Astronomy II - 29:62 - Spring 2014
Research Projects
Research projects: Students must complete a research
project during the semester. Students are allowed to work in
teams of 2 or 3 on the research project. Each research project
should represent a reasonable body of work (several lab nights worth
of effort along with a few hours per week outside of lab).
Each project should include acquisition of astronomical images, data
analysis, presentation of the results to the class, and preparation
of a written report.
Research project schedule:
- February 25 - Start thinking about your research
project. The project should be on a topic related to the
material covered during the Spring semester, i.e. outside the
solar system. Repeating a project done in the Fall
semester is not allowed.
- March 4 - Start in earnest on your research project. The
first part of the lab should be spent reviewing your proposed
project with the TA. The rest of the lab should be actual
work on the project.
- March 11 - Hand in a project proposal (one to two page report)
with three sections:
- Science motivation - what do you hope to learn from this
project.
- Observations to be performed - including specific targets,
filters, and exposure times.
- Goals for analysis of observations - what you want to learn
from the observations and how you will do the analysis.
- April 8 - First draft reports - First draft reports should
contain complete text for the Science Motivation section and
outlines for the remaining sections including descriptions of
all of the figures and tables that will appear in the final
report. You can re-use text from your project proposal.
- May 5, 7, 9 - Final project reports - Project
presentations will be done in class on May 5 and 7.
Final project reports are due at the beginning of class on May
9.