JohnMarkR / JWST

Laypersons tutorials for the James Webb Space Telescope

James Webb Space Telescope For Those Of Us That Aren't Astrophysicists But Care A Lot

Layperson's tutorials for working with data from the James Webb Space Telescope

Like many people, I am incredibly excited about the James Webb Space Telescope, and particularly the implications its discoveries may have for the field of Astrobiology. I'm so excited that I want to get involved and "help", but am facing a snag in that I'm not an astrophysicist, nor do I have an education in astronomy. I am a programmer though, and so I'm able to use many of the tools that Astronomers use to interact with the data from James Webb.

I'm figuring it out as I go along, and taking notes in the form of ipython notebooks, stored here, and hope they might be helpful for others with a similar background to me. Happy exoplaneting!

These tutorials do not require you to be an expert programmer- a basic knowledge of Python should be enough.

Tutorials

1. Accessing JWST Data

   This tutorial covers finding, programmatically downloading, and viewing real image data from the telescope.

2. Primer on Exoplanets and JWST

   This is a 2 part tutorial, where the goal is to first get and understand some real JWST exoplanet spectra, and then go through the process of modeling a synthetic exoplanet to match the observed data- thereby telling us what molecules are present in the planet's atmosphere.

   Part 1: Retrieving JWST Exoplanet Spectra

   Part 2: Modeling Exoplanet Spectra