There will be no onsite registration for workshops.
Please note that workshop participation is only available for registrants. One can't register for workshop only. Some workshops are only available to in-person registrants and some are hybrid.
Engaging the Public in Exoplanet Science Through the Legacy of TESS
Saturday, 11 June | 12:30 PM – 5:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
This workshop will provide attendees with good practices for successfully communicating exoplanet science to broad audiences (e.g., general public, citizen scientists, amateur astronomers, and professional astronomers not specializing in exoplanet research) and engaging the public and K12 students in the discoveries of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other missions in time-domain astronomy. We will give the attendees interactive, hands-on experience with interpreting and communicating science results through pair and group activities and illustrate novel ways to use visualizations of TESS data effectively to engage public interest in exoplanets, with the intention of improving their exoplanet science communication and data visualization skills to support their outreach and teaching activities. Through the use of active learning strategies, the workshop will highlight main sources of public misunderstandings of exoplanet science and suggest visual materials and presentation skills to resolve them and make exoplanet science more accessible to the public. TESS is a spaceborne NASA mission that has been surveying nearly the full sky in the red-optical band to discover small, transiting exoplanets. Since its launch in April 2018, it has recharacterized hundreds of exoplanets, discovered more 140 exoplanets, and delivered more than 4500 exoplanet candidates. Findings in exoplanet science frequently engage the public interest. In particular, the results from the TESS mission have been extensively covered by media and a large effort is being made to articulate the exoplanet discoveries of the mission and make them accessible to the general public and amateur astronomers as well as to professional astronomers that don’t necessarily specialize in exoplanets. Improving the public understanding of science has broad impacts on the support and funding available for scientific research. In particular, successfully informing young students is important as they include near-future scientists, voters, and decision makers of the society. Furthermore, making scientific knowledge equally accessible to everyone democratizes science and makes it more inclusive. Thus, this workshop will aim to holistically support the mission of science communicators.
Registration Fee: $35
Using Python and Astropy for Astronomical Data Analysis
Sunday, 12 June | 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
This workshop will cover the use of Python tools for astronomical data analysis and visualization, with the focus primarily on tools in the Astropy library and its affiliated packages. The goal is to introduce participants to the variety of tools which are available inside the Astropy library, and to provide time for participants to explore the science analysis capabilities which the scientific Python ecosystem and community provide. The format will include short presentations followed by instructor-guided tutorials where participants will use the tools and be able to ask questions in the company of expert users and developers. We will first introduce the core Astropy package and will cover units, quantities, and constants; coordinates; FITS, ASCII and Astropy tables; an introduction to object-oriented programming using lightcurves as the example data structure; images and their visualization; modeling; and other sub-packages. Then we will dive into a few coordinated packages such as CCD image reduction (ccdproc), photometry (photutils), and spectroscopy (specutils). As advanced formats become more widespread via data products from DKIST, JWST and other observatories, we are likely to update some content to touch on packages like asdf and gwcs. Participants must bring a laptop, or to be willing to use a Binder session in the cloud. We can support Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows 10+ operating systems. Support for Windows machines will require the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL; see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/). In-person participants needing installation help can come early to the workshop room (one hour before the talks start) to receive assistance. If AAS 240 permits a hybrid format for presenters and/or for participants, we will be happy to accommodate remote participants. By request, we can provide online helpdesk sessions but these must be requested by 2022 June 6th. That said -- you will miss the catered snacks, as well as the attractions of Pasadena and Southern California! The workshop materials will be presented using Jupyter notebooks. The workshop repository is https://github.com/astropy/astropy-workshop Prerequisites: Some familiarity with Python and Numpy will be helpful but is not required. We will send some suggested tutorials before the workshop for those with no prior Python experience. Some familiarity with git and Github will be useful for installing the workshop software on your own computer, though we will try to minimize the need for those tools.
Registration Fee: $100
Accessing NASA's Astrophysics Archives using Python
Sunday, 12 June | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
NASA's Astrophysics Archives preserve many terabytes of multi-wavelength images, catalogs, and spectra. While many astronomers are familiar with web-based tools that are convenient for searching and visualizing these data, programmatic interfaces through Python are increasingly in demand. This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to the programmatic data access tools available and the tutorial notebooks NAVO offers. We will describe science scenarios that combine multi-wavelength data from the HEASARC, IRSA, NED, and MAST that participants will then be encouraged to work through themselves. Workshop organizers will be available to help participants with them or adapt them for custom projects.
Registration Fee: $35
Robotic Telescope Labs for Survey-Level Undergraduates
Saturday, 11 June | 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
(Hybrid Workshop)
For the past dozen years, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been developing a unique, survey-level astronomy curriculum, primarily for undergraduate students, with the goal of significantly boosting STEM enrollments on a national scale, as well as boosting students’ technical and research skills. Called “Our Place In Space!”, or OPIS!, this curriculum leverages “Skynet” – a global network of ≈20 fully automated, or robotic, professional-grade telescopes that we have deployed at some of the world’s best observing sites. The curriculum has now been adopted by ≈2 dozen institutions, and we have just received (1) $1.85M from NSF's IUSE program to expand it nationwide, and (2) $3M from DoD’s NDEP program (a) to integrate a global network of 10m – 30m diameter radio telescopes into Skynet, and (b) to develop a follow-up curriculum to OPIS! Both grants come with funding for new instructors. The NSF grant pays up to $3,500 per adopting instructor to learn, implement, and help to improve the OPIS! curriculum. The DoD grant pays up to $9,000 per instructor to help to develop and trial the follow-up curriculum, which will be called “Astrophotography of the Multi-Wavelength Universe!”, or MWU!. OPIS! is a Skynet-based laboratory curriculum for undergraduates in small to very large, introductory survey courses – and works equally well online as in person. OPIS! consists of eight, and soon nine, labs in which students use the same research instrumentation as professionals to collect their own data. They then use this self-collected data (astronomical images and spectra) to reproduce some of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the past 400 years, and gain technical and research skills at the same time. Although students are not carrying out cutting-edge research, they are using cutting-edge research instrumentation, and consequently there is great overlap with the Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) pathway model. Furthermore, these labs/observing experiences are specifically designed to pair with standard introductory astronomy curricula, facilitating widespread adoption. OPIS! is built around the cosmic distance ladder, which serves as an organizing principle in many introductory astronomy courses/sequences, and as such, it reinforces students’ classroom experiences. The goal of OPIS! is to move beyond laboratory experiences in which students learn how to use a telescope for its own sake, to instead use them to do science – the same science that they are learning in class. MWU! will be for students who have already completed OPIS!, and will be able to provide this smaller group of students more telescope time per student, making possible color- and radio mapping-, inquiry-based explorations. MWU! will consist of three optical, three radio, and two capstone observing experiences that integrate optical and radio, on the subjects of stars, galaxies, and light-producing mechanisms. Astrophotography will serve as this curriculum’s “hook”. Skynet allows students to acquire professional-quality images from multiple, professional-quality telescopes and sites around the world. However, this is only half the battle. Students also need to be able to explore their images, and make fundamental measurements from them, around which relevant laboratory experiences can be designed. As such, we have additionally developed Afterglow Access. Afterglow Access is a web application, written in AngularJS. The advantage of being a web application is that students do not need to install it, and updates can be done server-side. Furthermore, Afterglow Access is connected to Skynet’s 100 TB RAID, so students do not need to download, independently store, and re-upload their images. Nor do they even need a quality computer, as the heaviest computational lifting (e.g., processing/analyzing many images simultaneously) is handled server-side as well. In this workshop, participants will be given accounts on both Skynet and Afterglow Access, and observing credits on Skynet. We will learn how to queue observations on Skynet, and will carry out at least one of the OPIS! observing experiences (other OPIS! activities will be overviewed more quickly). We will also explore the color-combination and radio-mapping capabilities that we are developing for MWU!. Lastly, we will hear from Geneva Lake Astrophysics and STEM (GLAS), which is leading our accessibility efforts, both for the Skynet and Afterglow Access interfaces, but also for ≈65 overview and tutorial videos that we developed to accompany the OPIS! curriculum. (These videos are now receiving ≈400 views/day for ≈30 hours viewed/day on YouTube.) GLAS is also working with disability services at participating universities, and will work directly with deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) and blind and visually-impaired (BVI) students during the grant periods.
Registration Fee: $35
Making the Most of AAS WorldWide Telescope
Sunday, 12 June | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
(Hybrid Workshop)
AAS WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a tool for showcasing astronomical data and knowledge. The new "2022 edition" of the free and open-source WWT visualization software can power everything from interactive "live" images in journal articles, to exploratory data visualizations in Jupyter notebooks, to immersive custom websites, to professional-grade planetariums. This interactive tutorial will introduce attendees to the WWT software ecosystem in the context of its applications to research, education, and public outreach. Participants should bring a laptop with battery charger and a modern web browser installed.
Registration Fee: $35
Effective Astronomy Visualizations for Research, Outreach, and Learning
Sunday, 12 June | 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
Clear and powerful visualizations are a critical component of science communications whether the intended audience is researchers, students, or the general public. Today’s astronomy visualizations comprise an ever-expanding collection of disciplines that include not only traditional fields of image processing, data presentation, and illustration, but also emerging technologies like data sonification, 3D printing, and virtual/augmented reality experiences.
The goal of this workshop is to connect the many communities represented within the AAS (including students, educators, communicators, developers, and researchers) with shared interests in the many areas of astronomy visualization. Presenters will share lessons learned through discussions of best practices for a variety of audiences. They will survey a wide range of visualization techniques and address their advantages and accessibility for different styles of learning. Case studies of effective visualizations will showcase how to communicate both knowledge and wonder via inspiring graphics.
Workshop participants will experience an overview of the current state of astronomy visualization including planning, creation, and delivery phases of the process. They will gain an enhanced appreciation for the selection of visualization-appropriate topics and datasets, the efforts and expertise required to achieve quality products, and the storytelling methods to reach learners of diverse backgrounds. In addition, participants will be encouraged to bring examples of their own projects, or pose particular visualization challenges to the group.
This workshop is facilitated by NASA’s Universe of Learning (www.universe-of-learning.org) with the goal of contributing to an expanding community of practice for those engaged in the many aspects of astronomy visualization, or “AstroViz.”
NASA’s Universe of Learning creates and disseminates resources and experiences that enable youth, families, and lifelong learners to explore fundamental questions in science, experience how science is done, and discover the universe for themselves. NASA’s Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The award is part of NASA’s Science Activation program, which connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond.
Registration Fee: $35
Autonomous Space Telescope Constellations
Saturday, 11 June | 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, 12 June | 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
(Hybrid Workshop)
In the 2020s, fully autonomous constellations of mass produced, modest aperture UV and IR telescopes, could bring to space-based astronomical research many of the same benefits that have been provided by arrays and networks of autonomous ground-based visual-wavelength telescopes. These constellations would not only expand the space research opportunities of professional astronomers and their graduate students but, thanks to economies of quantity production and their autonomous operation, could also open up research opportunities for undergraduate students and citizen scientists in a manner similar to what has already occurred with autonomous ground-based systems.
Advances in technology, quantity production of components, lower launch costs, and wide-band communications should help create a synergistic balance between large and small telescopes in space similar to what has already been achieved between large and small telescopes on the ground. Constellations of fully autonomous UV and IR CubeSat telescopes in space could provide time series photometric and spectroscopic follow-up observations of interesting objects identified by larger space and ground survey telescopes. Together, these various telescopes could form a synergistic, efficient whole.
If the cost of one of the constellations was low enough, it could become affordable for undergraduate and high school student research teams, as well as citizen scientists. When it comes to sports, everyone gets it; you have to play to learn what the game is all about. It would be ludicrous to teach basketball by practicing layups, free throws, and jump shots, but never play any actual games. Students, at the outset of their educational careers, benefit from conducting actual research. What could be more inspiring to potential STEM-career students, including women and minorities, than being a coauthor of a published paper based on space telescope observations?
The workshop will consider:
• Consolidating research requirements with respect for specific constellations locations, apertures, wavelengths, and sensors
• Timing of constellation deployments (should a small CubeSat UV imaging constellation be first?)
• Designing constellations to be fully autonomous
• Efficiently producing constellation telescopes in quantity
• Standardizing hardware and software interfaces to facilitate interchangeable modular components across constellations
• Dedicating a low-cost constellation to student and citizen science research
And suggest how we can move forward:
• Scientists will need to group similar research programs in a manner that would allow them to be carried out by constellations to meet the most research needs
• Industry will need to set standards, conduct feasibility studies, and provide cost estimates
• Educators, students, and citizen scientists will need to organize themselves in preparation for affordable access to space telescopes
History could repeat itself. Astronomical research began with small telescopes, but soon shifted to ever-larger mountaintop telescopes. The microcomputer revolution led to arrays and networks of modest-aperture, off-the-shelf, fully autonomous telescopes appearing on mountaintops. They complimented the larger telescopes in a synergistic manner. Time on these autonomous telescopes became so affordable that published research by undergraduate students, high school students, and citizen scientists blossomed. Constellations of affordable, autonomous space telescopes could, in a similar manner, lead to the democratization of space telescope research.
Contact: Russell Genet, [email protected], (805) 438-3305
Registration Fee: $35
Software Carpentry
Saturday, 11 June | 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, 12 June | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
Computing is now an integral part of every aspect of astronomy and astrophysics, but most scientists are never taught how to build, use, validate, and share software. As a result, many spend hours or days doing things badly that could be done well in just a few minutes. The goal of the Software Carpentry Workshop is to change that by teaching best practices. The tools presented at the two day workshop will enable astronomers to spend less time wrestling with software and more time doing useful research. Furthermore, good quality, well tested code will make their science results easier to reproduce, distribute, and update.
The Software Carpentry Workshop will consist of short tutorials alternating with hands-on practical exercises and will cover the core software skills needed to construct, use, verify, and share software in astronomy. The first day’s tutorials will consist of shell automation of tasks, basic python programming, and an introduction to code review. The second day’s sessions will shift to focus on advanced python and version control with git/GitHub. The workshop will be run by a set of two Carpentries certified instructors and a team of helpers.
The workshop is aimed at astronomers at all stages of their education and careers who wish to learn computational tools to increase the reproducibility and efficiency of their work. Participants should have some knowledge of programming (not necessarily Python) and have some familiarity with the shell command line (i.e. navigating directories on the shell command line). Specific knowledge of Python and git are not required.
Registration is for both days. Participants will need personal computers and to be able to install software in advance of the workshop. A group list will be compiled approximately one month prior to the workshop to distribute software requirements and for collaborative installation troubleshooting. More information on the Software Carpentry project can be found at http://software-carpentry.org.
Registration Fee: $35
Foundations of Astronomical Data Science
Saturday, 11 June | 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, 12 June | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
As the astronomical community moves into an era of big data, the paradigm of data processing is changing. We are transitioning from local end-to-end data processing (from taking or simulating observations to publishing the data) to retrieving pre-processed large datasets through database queries. The growing importance of such transactions are evident with current projects such as TESS, Gaia, SDSS, ZTF, HST, and Illustris and will become a necessity to fully utilize the next generation of astronomical surveys,telescopes, and simulations. Interaction with these databases and visualization of these complex datasets will be essential skills. This workshop will introduce participants to selecting information from an online database in an efficient and reproducible way and effectively visualizing the results.
The Astronomy Data Carpentry Workshop will consist of short tutorials alternating with hands-on practical exercises focused on building complex SQL queries using Astroquery, working with the retrieved data as Astropy Tables and Pandas data frames, storing the data locally for future use, and communicating the results with clear and compelling figures using Matplotlib. The workshop will be run by two Carpentries certified instructors as well as a team of helpers.
This course is aimed at astronomers at all stages of their education and careers. Participants are expected to have shell and Python knowledge equivalent to the Software Carpentry Python Curriculum (https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-inflammation/): the ability to write a function in Python, familiarity with Python built-in types such as lists and dictionaries, and the ability to navigate directories using the command line.
This Data Carpentry curriculum is a new offering developed with the AAS and Carpentries using a Venture Partnership Fund from the AIP. See this blog post for more details
about the curriculum and the development process: https://carpentries.org/blog/2021/04/call-for-beta-applications-astrono…
Registration is for both days. Participants will need personal workstations, internet connectivity, zoom, and be able to install software in advance of the workshop. A group list
will be compiled approximately one month prior to the workshop to distribute software requirements and provide collaborative troubleshooting. More information on the Data Carpentry project can be found at https://datacarpentry.org.
Registration Fee: $35
How to Give Great Presentations: A Scientist's Guide to Effective Communication
Saturday, 11 June | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
(In-Person Workshop)
Presenting your research effectively to a broad audience is an essential career skill, yet most professional scientists receive little formal training in effective communication. This interactive workshop aims to empower researchers at all levels who wish to improve their own presentation skills. During the workshop participants will (i) learn how to communicate their research in various formats such as conference presentations, posters, journal clubs, and colloquia (ii) receive practical tips on presenting and answering questions with confidence (iii) create a workflow for designing accessible and engaging presentations regardless of format (iv) learn to identify common features of effective communication so they can incorporate them into their own presentations. Participants will have the opportunity to receive tailored one-on-one feedback in this hands-on workshop, and are encouraged to bring a draft of their own presentation(s) to work on. This workshop will be facilitated by a team of experienced professional astronomers with the support of the AAS Committee on Employment.
Registration Fee: $35
2. Register for AAS 240
