AST 424 -- Introduction to Astrophysical Research

2018-2019, Marten van Kerkwijk



Classes
Time: F3-5, starting Friday Sep 14th (i.e., not Sep 7th)
Place: AB 88

Part of research is to become/keep yourself up to date with the field. Hence, in addition to the classes, you are required to attend the departmental Colloquia, which are 1-hour talks by (mostly) outside visitors (W3 in Cody Hall [AB 107]).
As a researcher, you are considered part of the department. Please join for departmental coffee (starting about 10:30 every morning in AB, 2nd floor lounge; on Mondays and Thursdays this includes discussion of recent astronomy results) and other events.

Lecturer
Prof. Marten van Kerkwijk
Office: MP 1203B, 416-946-7288
Email: mhvk@astro.utoronto.ca.

Course Description
In this introduction to astrophysical research, you will use what you learned in the last years to study a current problem in astronomy, under supervision of a faculty member. Specific goals are to:

Advisers
Students will identify and contact potential research advisers, and should have chosen their superviser by the end of September. Any research member of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics (DAA), Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), or Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics (Dunlap) can serve as an adviser. In case a post-doctoral fellow or CITA visitor is an adviser, a faculty member from DAA, CITA or Dunlap must be added as a co-adviser. The course instructor will help match students to advisers, but the most effective strategy is to meet in person with potential advisers after preliminary e-mail contacts.

The following are good places to see/meet advisers

Course requirements (in bold: used for evaluation)

  1. Find an adviser and a project. Ideally, the project should be useful and interesting to both the student and the adviser. It should consider a current topic, which may or may not directly involve the superviser's current research. The student will briefly (10 min) describe the plans for the project - as consulted with the adviser - during class meetings (tentatively, Oct 5 and Oct 12).
  2. Discuss goals and expectations for the project with your adviser(s), and develop a study plan for the whole year. Plan to meet with the adviser on a bi-weekly basis; see item 4 below.
  3. Write up a project proposal (2-3 pages; 15% of the final mark) by Nov 16 (-7.5%/day for lateness, i.e., zero for reports two or more days late). The proposal should be formatted in LaTeX using the AASTex package as this will give some practice for the final report. The proposal should explain the background and motivation for the project, and outline the literature you will study, in a compelling and persuasive manner. A hardcopy of the proposal must be delivered to the instructor and the adviser.
  4. Meet with your adviser(s) regularly, at least once per two weeks. Good communication is the key to good research. Both you and your adviser will enjoy these meetings a lot more if you have read new papers and bring new questions each time.
  5. Short progress e-mails by the end of each month, starting at the end of November (5% for five monthly e-mails, CC'd to the adviser). The e-mails can just contain a paragraph or two describing your activities and progress. No points given for reports that are late.
  6. Class participation (5%) for discussions about colloquia, attendance of classes with lectures by the instructor and invited faculty members (e.g., how to give a scientific talk and how to prepare a scientific paper).
  7. Discussion of a colloquium (10%) Any time between October and early March. This should discuss a colloquium on a topic related to yours, discussing both the science and the quality of the presentation, in a way sufficiently interesting to generate further discussion.
  8. Summary talk (15%) in the AST 424 Jamboree, likely in the second half of March. These should be about 15 minutes long and will be in-class (with the AST 425 students), with also advisers expected to attend. The research should be presented in a way sufficiently interesting to generate discussion.
  9. Final report (50%) by Thursday, April 4th, (-12.5%/day for lateness, i.e., zero for reports four or more days late). The report should be compose in LaTeX using the AASTex package, with the word and figure constraints of an Astrophysical Journal Letter. Evaluatation will be jointly by the adviser and course instructor, and includes the amount of progress made.

Links
For help on how to use LaTeX and the AASTeX package (normally used for preparing manuscripts for ApJ, AJ, and PASP), check out the documentation, and then download the required files (on Debian and Ubuntu, these are part of the texlive-publishers package).