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2024 HotSci at JHU/STScI: Science Toolbox and Professional Development

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Colloquia

About Event

Wed 21 Aug 2024

Location

Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
3700 San Martin Drive
Baltimore, MD 21218

Time

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

Contact Information

Have questions? Please contact STScI.

Description

"Science Toolbox and Professional Development" featuring John Soltis (JHU) on Evaluating the Robustness of Cosmological Simulations using Scale-free Cosmologies, Mitchell Revalski (STScI) on Getting to the Point: A Jupyter Notebook for HST PSF Modeling, Elena Manjavacas (ESA/AURA @ STScI) on Mentoring as a Tool to Build Community in Astronomy, and Erik Tollerud (STScI) on Open Software, Open Science, and You.

Notes

All 2024 HotSci talks are held on Wednesdays at 3:00 PM. This series is hosted by STScI and will be held as an in-person and virtual event.

You may join in person at STScI’s Café Con or virtually on STScI's Live Science Events Facebook page.

Please direct questions or comments to contact above. The 2024 HotSci Committee members are: Logan Jones (STScI), Sapna Mishra (STScI), Pallavi Patil (JHU), Adarsh Ranjan (STScI).

Special Talk

  • Speaker: John Soltis (JHU)
    Title: Evaluating the Robustness of Cosmological Simulations using Scale-free Cosmologies   
    Abstract: I will discuss recent work I have done on evaluating the robustness of halo mass accretion rates in cosmological simulations using the property of self-similarity found in scale-free simulations. Using scale-free cosmologies we can provide upper bounds on the reliability of halo properties in cosmological simulations, including LambdaCDM simulations and fully hydrodynamic cosmological simulations. This approach to evaluating the accuracy of simulations provides an absolute measure of internal consistency of the simulation, and is essential to improving the accuracy of simulations and our predictions for cosmology and astrophysics that are derived from simulations.

    Speaker: Mitchell Revalski (STScI)​​​​​​​
    Title: Getting to the Point: A Jupyter Notebook for HST PSF Modeling​​​​​​​
    Abstract: The WFC3 team has developed a jupyter notebook that allows users to generate Point Spread Function (PSF) models for their HST observations. A key strength of this new tool is the ability to work with both individual exposures as well as drizzled data products. Users have several options depending on their science goals, including downloading a library of PSF models for high-precisions stellar photometry and astrometry, extracting and stacking stars for characterizing extended wing emission and diffraction spikes, and querying the MAST cutout service to construct models for sparse fields. This new tool is publicly available on Github and is designed to be modular for use with WFC3, ACS, and WFPC2, with future possibilities of integrating with WebbPSF.

    Speaker: Elena Manjavacas (ESA/AURA @ STScI)​​​​​​​
    Title: Mentoring as a Tool to Build Community in Astronomy​​​​​​​
    Abstract: In this talk I will present the Mentoring Program for Female Astronomers that I lead in the Spanish Astronomical Society. This program started in 2021, during the pandemic, to offer support to early-career astronomers in Spain or connected to the Spanish astronomical society. I will introduce the activities that we carried out in these 3 years to support female early-career astronomers. I will also share mentoring resources within the US available for the community.

    Speaker: Erik Tollerud (STScI)​​​​​​​
    Title: Open Software, Open Science, and You
    Abstract: Abstract is forthcoming.

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