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Astro Software
Most astronomical software is run on some variant of Unix. On a Mac, you can access the underlying "X" system through the Terminal (under Utilities) or X11 (or XQuartz). Any Unix/Linux system comes with powerful command line tools. A cheat-sheet for the most common Unix commands can be found here.
The bash shell (your default command line environment on many systems) is in itself a pretty powerful programming language. A description is found here:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ .
Instructions for how to set up bash on the computers in the Lab, and useful examples for the class, are found here.
Your Unix / Linux / Mac comes with awk, another built-in programming language:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.pdf
as well as sed, a stream editor:
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html
Python is becoming ubiquitous in astronomy (and many other fields!). Many astro packages have been written for, or ported to, python. The easiest way to install python is via the anaconda platform:
https://www.continuum.io/downloads
The python package astropy contains many functions useful for astronomy, including working with astronomical images in fits format, and is included in anaconda by default. If you are using a different platform, make sure to install astropy.
A helpful feature of python is that a lot of documentation is available on the web.
github is a platform for code repositories, which makes it easy for multiple people to work on one piece of software, while keeping track of changes and version. In addition, it comes with wiki pages for documentation, and "issues" for discussion threads. Code can be accessed via command-line, in the browser, or apps.
https://github.com/
Here is a starter tutorial video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g9lsbJBPEs
along with a "Getting Started" repository:
https://github.com/drphilmarshall/GettingStarted
Versatile tool for viewing fits files (images).
http://ds9.si.edu/site/Home.html
Source Extractor is used to extract object catalogs from astronomical images.
http://www.astromatic.net/software/sextractor
http://astroa.physics.metu.edu.tr/MANUALS/sextractor/Guide2source_extractor.pdf
The website http://www.astromatic.net/ also hosts many other useful astronomy software packages.
Helpful for interactive viewing of large catalogs, including in fits or VOTable format. Can interface with ds9 via the samp protocol.
http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/
Iraf used to be THE software package for astronomy. It has lots of features, but is quite cumbersome to work with.
http://iraf.noao.edu/
Most (all?) iraf packages have been ported to python via pyraf. Pyraf has now also been deprecated.
NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) maintains many tools and packages for working with FITS files. We will work with the FTOOLS suite, and in particular the ftpixcalcftpixcalc task.
IDL used to be the other standard software package in astronomy. Quite powerful, but also quite expensive.
http://www.idlcoyote.com/
The Math SINC site has IDL licenses that can be used for this lab.
Input an image of the sky, and astrometry.net will tell you exactly what part of the sky it is showing. If given an input FITS image, it will return a FITS image with the correct astrometric header, so that pixel coordinates are mapped to (R.A., Dec.) coordinates. astrometry.net can also be installed locally on your computer.
http://astrometry.net/
Web tool to help plan observations.
http://catserver.ing.iac.es/staralt/index.php
Has lots of useful information beyond satellite information, such as twilight times, and a full sky viewer.
http://www.heavens-above.com/
Astronomical database:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/
Database for extragalactic objects:
https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
The American Association of Variable Star Observers has a nice finding chart tool:
https://www.aavso.org/apps/vsp/