The Institute Astronomical Observatory of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Polish Astronomical Society welcome to the summer school Software Systems for Astronomy .

Overwiev:

The course is based on a new textbook, Software Systems for Astronomy (Springer 2014)

The course covers the control systems used to point the telescope and operate its cameras and spectrographs; as well as the web-based tools used to plan those observations. The course also covers the analysis and archiving of astronomical data once it has been acquired. Students will learn about existing software tools and packages, develop their own software tools, and analyze real datasets from today's leading observatories. The course is open to astronomy PhD students and they are encouraged to complete an introductory programming course before enrolling in a school.

School format:

The summer school consists of ten total days of instruction: all day courses in two 3 hour (morning and afternoon) sessions. Homework assignments taken from the exercises following each chapter of the textbook are given each day and reviewed during the morning session on the following day. All sections of the texbook are covered. The course is appropriate for graduates and professionals who intend to be, or already are, working as professionals in the fields of astronomy.

Principal lecturer - Dr. Albert Conrad:

As both an astronomer and a software developer, Dr. Albert Conrad has developed and used software systems for all phases of observing: from planning the observation, to taking the data, to analyzing the data in preparation for publication. Dr. Conrad's research interests include asteroid systems and developing novel techniques to study comets, planets, and the moons of planets, in particular Jupiter's moon Io. His complete bibliography includes nearly 100 publications. These range from his early software designs for the Keck Observatory to his discovery of a small moon orbiting the asteroid 41 Daphne. He enjoys sharing the results of his research through public lectures and classroom visits.

Dr. Conrad received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1994. He then worked as software engineer and support astronomer at both Lick and Keck Observatories before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy to lead the development of a next generation adaptive optics system. He enjoys cycling, running, and outrigger canoe paddling.