Your own archival proposal
The final lab is the full process for an observational astronomer: you will write a project proposal, we will hold a Time Allocation Committee to rank all proposals, and your group will conduct your top-ranked project. Because of Covid, we will only write archival proposals, in which you apply to analyze data that already exists in various data archives. These are actually quite common; there are a number of possibilities to apply for grant funding for archival research.
- Hubble Legacy Archive - images from the Hubble telescope, nice interface
- MAST - data from UV, optical, and infrared space telescopes; some High-Level Science Products; PanSTARRS
- ESO - data from ESO telescopes, including the VLT
- NOAO - data from NOAO telescopes; older site here
- KOA - some data taken with Keck telescopes
- Gemini
- CFHT
- telarchive - python tool to query a number of these archives at one
- SDSS - imaging and spectroscopy of the northern extragalactic sky
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PanSTARRS - imaging of everything at
- Dark Energy Survey - imaging of 5000 sq. deg. of southern extragalactic sky
- 2MASS - infrared all-sky survey
- Gaia - astrometry and photometry for 1.8 billion stars, all-sky
- TESS - lightcurves of 200,000 stars, all-sky
- OGLE - lightcurves of stars in Galactic bulge and Magellanic Clouds
- LIGO - Gravitational Wave events
Come up with an idea for a project. Your aim needs to be to measure something, not just to make a pretty image or plot. You can re-create "classic" measurements with updated data, or come up with your own ideas, or something in between. Some possible examples:
- Determine the Hubble constant by identifying galaxies with direct distance measurements, downloading spectroscopic data for them to measure their redshifts.
- Measure the rotation curve of a spiral galaxy, estimate its stellar mass, and compare the two.
To fulfill the SBU Physics lab requirements, the project has to be distinct from Labs 1 and 2. Your proposal has to be distinct from your lab-mates, so be sure to check with them. They will automatically be Co-Investigators on your proposal.
The two main parts of the proposal are:
- Scientific Justification: explain why your project is interesting - this is where you have to "sell" your idea to the reviewers. If you are repeating a "classic" experiment, explain its importance for astronomy. In this section, clearly explain what literature results you will compare your measurement to.
- Technical Justification: be very specific about your plans to acquire and analyze the data. Include calculations to show that your data have enough signal-to-noise for your measurement. E.g. identify the list of RR Lyrae stars you will work with. Explain how you will measure the period, and the luminosity. Look up the Gaia measurement uncertainties as function of magnitude, and estimate for how many of your RR Lyrae stars you will be able to measure the distance.
% Use the latex template provided below to write your proposal.
You have to use the following LaTeX template, which is adapted from the NOAO proposal template. Pay attention to the comments in the tex file, too!
LaTeX template file
LaTeX style file
Reference file for template
Figure for template
PDF of template
Note that at most 1 page can be used for the scientific justification. The other pages may be used for figures, tables, and object list. You have to use an 11-pt font, 1-inch margins, and single spacing, otherwise your proposal will be disqualified! Make sure to submit your proposal by the deadline - late submissions cannot be accepted!
The proposal review will be blinded - for the PI and CoIs, list only your SBU IDs, no names!
For the Time Allocation Committee (TAC), you will be asked to read and evaluate all other proposals. You will be primary referee for one proposal, and secondary referee for another. The primary and secondary referee will lead the discussion of each proposal; we will then assign final scores by secret ballot.
From the final ranking of proposals, your group will conduct the proposal that was ranked highest. E.g. if your proposal ranked 5th, and your lab-mates ranked 2nd and 7th, you all will do the project that was ranked 2nd.
Here are four successful example proposals: