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Today I finished up my evaluations of my classmates logbooks. I then reread Matt and Vinay's paper that was published in The RBSE Journal, because I hadn't read it since the beginning of the year. I understood it much better this time around. Last year Matt and Vinay focused on actually calculating the star formation rates of three galaxies. They used data that was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope because it was more accurate with its infrared technology. The Spitzer Space Telescope observed the clusters that they selected for research for two and a half hours, which is how they got their information. They then analyzed the data that the received. I finally was able to find their spreadsheets and look at them. However, I have no idea what the numbers all mean. There are about 20 different graphs and tables! (It's ridiculous!) They used a bunch of equations to finally determine their star formation rates.
 * November 11, 2007**

Their paper was also helpful in terms of being very readable (now that I have a general understanding of what the project is). I was able to understand the concepts mentioned in it. It also provided a lot of really good definitions for words related and crucial to the project. I underlined like crazy as I read them all and added many of them to the Glossary on the page. I alphabetized the glossary as well, because we seemed to have forgot about doing that when we edited in class. Hopefully it is a little easier to navigate through now! After that I updated my logbook from last week.

This week is going to be spent updating my logbook. I think that I need to start putting more information in it about what I am learning. Other people's logbooks were very informative, and I think that I should add more substance into my entries! I spent the class today updating my logbook and the Main Spitzer page. We were supposed to go to the Jordan Science building tonight, but it's a little too cloudy and rainy ou now, so we wouldn't be able to see anything. [Welcome to observational astronomy. When astronomers write one another, they often use the saluation "clear skies!" You're getting a feel for why--TL:)]
 * November 12, 2007**

Haha! Well tonight I have been working on updating the main SFR page, as I had way too many technical difficulties today in class. Shocking, I know! I apparently am not as computer-literate as I would like to think that I am, but I believe that I fixed everything up. I also decided to clue everyone in on what reading I have been doing outside of class on a separate page for my notes. I thought that including them in my logbook would make it unnecessarily long and dry, so check out my new notes page! It doesn't contain any information yet, but summaries are coming (slowly though, as I am a very slow reader...especially in science-related pieces)!

I am off to read about the stars! Clear skies tomorrow hopefully! : )

Today I sent an e-amil to DL about typing galxies. He asked us earlier this year to include the verification of the galaxy typings from the Spitzer data from last year in our project. I guess Rose Finn typed the galaxies last year, but no one ever verified them, so that would be interesting to do. I don't know if there is a certain formula for doing this, or if you have to simply observe the galaxies to figure this out. I don't even know what possible types of galaxies there are! I spent the rest of the class looking up information from the p-drive to see if there was anything that would help with this. I found a lot of really helpful information in the one zipped astronomy file. I looked at everything under the Spitzer label, but it was all to long to read in class. I wanted to e-mail it to myself, but I couldn't find the files then, which was rather unfortunate.
 * November 13, 2007**

Today I created new pages to start putting notes up from the student papers that I have read. I got a decent start on the paper by Zackery Schroeder. The majority of the notes that I put on the page are taken directly from the paper. I thought it would be convenient to outline it, so that we can just refer back to that later in the year.
 * November 14, 2007**

Today I added more to my notes page from the "Galaxy Clusters" by Zackery Schroeder. I continued to outline things from the paper, and got to the part of describing the differences between the three high redshift galaxy clusters that he researched. Schroeder actually went to Passadena, California, to observe at the Spitzer Space Telescope Center on the Caltech campus, so all of his information was gathered first-hand. I also updated my logbook, because it wasn't completely up to speed for the week. I actually wrote a lot more than shows up now, but for some reason that didn't save. I added a couple of terms to the glossary that I came across in Schroeder's paper.
 * November 15, 2007**

Today CC explained one of the key formulas for our project. He explained to me how you figure out what the c-value is in calculating SFR. To do that you integrate the SED model as a function of time and divide it by the rest wavelength. We have already put the conversion of the observed wavelength to the rest wavelength in our glossary page, because I couldn't figure out how to get the equation uploaded onto the actual page of the formula page. Right at the moment, we are discussing what the limits are for the formula, because CC has informed me that you cannot integrate without having limits. CC and I asked MM to read some of the student papers that we have, as well, to see if he had any ideas about what the limits could be. There wasn't time for any of us to get a complete handle on things, though, so I suppose it will just have to wait until Monday. I also updated my logbook today and added to the glossary page.
 * November 16, 2007**

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