Polychronis Papaderos

Format: 10 classes of 90 minutes each

I. (August 6, Time: TBC, Type: Lecture)
Telescopes, CCDs and astronomical filter systems; basic definitions (e.g. apparent and absolute magnitude, color, surface brightness); The MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes (MONET)

II. (August 7, Time: TBC, Type: Lecture)
Gravitational Lensing (principles, strong lensing, weak lensing and its application on studies of the mass (and Dark Matter) distribution in e.g. galaxy clusters, examples of ray tracing models)

III. (August 8, Time: TBC, Type: Lecture)
Galaxies in the nearby Universe: the Hubble sequence; general properties of galaxies (colors, gas content, surface brightness profiles and galaxy fitting laws, bulge/disk ratio)

IV. (August 9, Time: 10 p.m., Type: Observing run)
Participation in monitoring campaign of the Galactic bulge with the goal of discovering microlensing events. Acquisition of dithered exposures of the Galactic bulge with MONET South (South Africa).

V. (August 10, Time: TBC, Type: Laboratory course)
Reduction of Galactic bulge images and visualization of the results with ImageJ. Post-processing of the data using the ESO MIDAS package and comparison with images previously taken in the microlensing campaign. Report of possible new microlensing events to the MONET collaboration.

VI. (August 13, Time: 7 a.m., Type: Observing run)
Acquisition of several dithered images for an Elliptical and a Lenticular (S0) nearby galaxy with the MONET telescope in Texas.

VII. (August 14, Time: TBC, Type: Laboratory course)
Reduction (bias and flat field correction, imaging stacking) of the galaxy images, derivation and fitting of surface brightness profiles. Determination of the S�rsic Index and the bulge/disk ratio. Data reduction and analysis rely on scripts in MIDAS, developed by P. Papaderos.

VIII. (August 15, Time: TBC, Type: Lecture)
Star formation and galaxy evolution: Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, color-magnitude diagram; star formation history of Hubble-type galaxies; color evolution as a function of SFH (demonstration of predictions from evolutionary synthesis models), starburst activity in interacting galaxies.

IX. (August 16, Time: 7 a.m., Type: Observing run)
Observations of interacting/merging starburst galaxies in two filters with the MONET - Texas.

X. (August 17, Time: TBC, Type: Laboratory course)
Reduction of the imaging data for starburst galaxies, computation of color maps and radial color profiles (using scripts in MIDAS). Estimation of the age of the starburst based on the observed colors.

 

First results obtained by the students in this course available here.

We are grateful to Dr. Frederic V. Hessman (University of G�ttingen) for permitting us access to the MONET telescopes and for his support during the observations.
The MONET (MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes) project has been possible thanks to the generous financial support by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.