Preparing the Community
In November 2019, STScI hosted the inaugural JWST Master Class, an intensive week-long training session for 28 trainers selected from the community at large. These 28 Master Class graduates have received in-depth training on JWST and on the proposal preparation tools, and have been tasked with sharing that knowledge with other scientists by hosting one or more local workshops at their local institutions. This “train-the-trainers” concept in intended to seed the broad community with the know-how to write and submit JWST proposals, providing help during the open Cycle 1 call for proposals period where it will be most effective. Local training events may also help proposers build collaborations spanning a wider range of institutions, large and small.
Workshop-in-a-Box
The Workshop-in-a-Box is a compendium of training and support materials that have been adapted from those used during the JWST Master Class at STScI. These materials can be used for personal training or for organizing your own local proposal planning workshops. Links to the files are provided in the expandable sections below or you can download the entire set of materials in a zipped file. Of course, STScI also provides extensive help in the form of the JWST User Documentation system (JDox) as well as a series of short training videos for ETC, APT, and other resources, which are hosted on the JWST Observer YouTube channel. These materials are not duplicated in the Workshop-in-a-Box materials.
Schedule and Materials
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The files in this folder include basic “getting started” materials that you may find useful as a starting place for you own workshops. In the context of the Master Class, these were assigned to participants prior to coming to the Master Class week. They include:
- JWST Documentation and Helpdesk Resources
- Understanding JWST Detectors
- Understanding and using the ETC
- Understanding and using APT for JWST
Where appropriate, answer keys are also provided.
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This folder contains PPTs (or Keynote files) as well as PDFs of the plenary presentations presented during the Master Class. While some of these talks expand on information from the homework (in terms of additional functionality of the tools), these talks were also geared toward explaining some of the “why's” behind the main tools. The PPTs are provided to make it easier to grab certain figures or materials for crafting your own overview talks for local workshops. Webcasts from the Master Class Plenary sessions are also linked below for most of the topics.
- Overview of JDox (Bill Blair/Ori Fox)
- Overview of JWST Help Desk (Stacey Bright)
- Understanding the ETC (Klaus Pontoppidan)
- Understanding the APT and APT Overheads (Shelly Meyett and Bill Blair)
- Ancillary Tools (Bill Blair)
- JWST Policies (Lou Strolger and Amaya Moro-Martin)
- How to Teach/Ideas for Communicating Effectively
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After the Master Class, we asked the hands-on session coordinators to produce a short set of bulleted “Take Away points” for each topic. Even if you don’t delve into the hands-on materials, you may find these cheat sheets quite helpful:
- Coronagraphy
- IFUs
- MOS
- Mosaics
- Moving Targets
- NIRISS AMI
- Parallels
- TSOs
- WFSS
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The Master Class included several days of 2- and 4-hour hands-on sessions on various more advanced topics for the participants. Most of this material is too detailed for use in local workshops for a general audience. However, if you or your local participants want a more detailed dive into specific observing modes, you will have these materials to draw on. If you workshop has a general open ‘hack’ session where participants can learn more about specific topics of interest, or if they are actually working on proposal concepts themselves, they may find the exercises and other support materials in the various Hands-on directories of interest.
Level 2 Topic Instruments & Tools Tools High Contrast Imaging (AMI, Coronagraphy) MIRI, NIRCam, NIRISS APT, CVT, ETC IFUs MIRI, NIRSpec APT, ETC Mosaicking with imagers MIRI, NIRCam APT, Aladin NIRSpec MOS NIRSpec, APT, ETC, MPT Solar System Observing with JWST MIRI, NIRCam, NIRSpec, NIRISS APT, ETC, MTVT Specifying Parallel Observations MIRI, NIRCam, NIRISS APT, JIST Time-series Observing (transiting exoplanets) NIRISS, NIRCam, NIRSpec APT, ATC, ExoCTK, PandExo Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy NIRCam, NIRISS APT, ETC -
Additional support materials include:
- Getting Started Guide: This file was sent to Master Class participants to help them find and load the various software tools they would need for their workshop. You might consider using something like this file to get your participants ready for your workshop.
- Master Class logo for use in presentations
- Entire set of materials in a zipped file (available to download)
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Here is the current schedule of upcoming local community workshops. Please check back as information will be updated regularly.
Date Location Organizer Capacity Comments 1/15 Amherst College,
Amherst, MAColette Salyk and Kate Follette 50 One-day workshop. Participants are encouraged to contact the organizers with a description of the observing modes they are likely to be interested in. 1/21-22 Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MDDavid Nataf 40 1/24 Institute for Astronomy
Honolulu, HIJacqueline Keane Proposal Planning Astro Coffee Talk at 10:30 a.m. 1/30 Campus MIL, Université de Montréal,
Montréal, CanadaNeil Cook and Loic Albert 40 Webinar 1/30-31 University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, CanadaJeremy Heyl, Javiera Parada, Ilaria Caiazzo, and Chris Willott 50 Two-day training workshop for experienced and new JWST users.
- Day 1: We will have an information session on the different JWST instruments, observations modes, and proposal preparation tools.
- Day 2: We will offer two hands-on sessions to help you get started with your own proposal.
1/31 University of Texas at Austin,
Austin, TX (Peter O'Donnell Jr. Building (POB))Micaela Bagley, Jasleen Matharu, Rebecca Larson, Taylor Hutchison, and Vicente Estrada-Carpenter 45 Our team will be hosting two all-day workshops, one each in Austin and College Station
Email organizers
Twitter account: @jwst_TXmaster
2/3 University of Chicago,
Chicago, ILJenny Bergner 30 Full-day workshop 2/4 UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovations,
Irvine, CA (Venture Cove B)Hooshang Nayyeri, Vivian U, and Sabrina Stierwalt 40 Website 2/6 Northwestern University,
Evanston, ILJenny Bergner 30 Full-day workshop 2/6 UCLA Physics & Astronomy,
Los Angeles, CA (Conference Room PAB 4-330)Xin Wang 40 2/6-7 Gemini Observatory,
Hilo, HI (Lecture Hall)Siyi Xu, Trent Dupuy, Sandy Leggett, Christy Cunningham, Morten Andersen, Hwihyun Kim, Ricardo Salinas, Geoffrey Bower, Klaus Hodapp, John O'Meara, Steve Mairs, Andreea Petric, Mirko Simunovic 60 Website 2/17-18 Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM,
Mexico City, MexicoAida Wofford, Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, and Omaira González Martin 100 Website 2/18 & 2/24 National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO),
Charlottesville, VA (Auditorium)Christian Eistrup and Dana Anderson 50 Part 1: Overview & background (2/18)
Part 2: Hands-on session (2/24)2/18-19 Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZAudrey Martin and Lauren McGraw 100 Two-day workshop 2/19 Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ (Department of Physics and Astronomy) Grace Telford 40 2/20-21 Arecibo Observatory,
Puerto RicoEstela Fernández-Valenzuela and Mario de Prá 50 2/21 Texas A&M University,
College Station, TX (Mitchell Physics Building)Jasleen Matharu, Micaela Bagley, Taylor Hutchison, Vicente Estrada-Carpenter, Rebecca Larson 40 Our team will be hosting two all-day workshops, one each in Austin and College Station
Email organizers
Twitter account: @jwst_TXmaster
2/27-28 Florida Space Institute,
Orlando, FLEstela Fernández-Valenzuela, Ryan Challener, Charles Schambeau, Christofer Bennett, Theodora Karalidi, and Kerri Donaldson Hanna 110 2/29 Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TXLiliana Rivera Sandoval 35 One-day workshop with a hands-on session.
Workshop poster
3/2 Montana State University,
Bozeman, MTMallory Molina, Zachary Schutte, and Amy Reines 25 One-day workshop: Morning is a general information session and afternoon is hack-day style with parallel sessions based on instrument interest.
3/2-4 University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MIArthur Adams, Michael Meyer, Ke Zhang, and Matthew DeFurio 60 Website 3/6 European South Observatory, Santiago de Chile Estela Fernández-Valenzuela 3/9 & 3/10 Stanford University,
Stanford, CA (Physics & Astronomy Building)Rebecca Canning 30 We will host two one-day workshops on March 9th and 10th. 30 people will be able to attend in person and a remote participation option will be provided.
Email organizer3/12 University of Western Ontario,
London, ON, CanadaAlexandros Maragkoudakis, Els Peeters, Jan Cami, Collin Matthew Knight, and Ameek Sidhu 30 3/12-13 Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZJenny Patience 3/13 University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KSKevin C. Cooke, Allison Kirkpatrick, and Kristin Rennells 120 3/16 University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZIrene Shivaei 100 3/17 Institute for Astronomy
Honolulu, HIJacqueline Keane JWST Proposal Planning Workshop (10 a.m-4 p.m.) 3/18 Campus MIL, Université de Montréal,
Montréal, Canada
(Room A-5502)Neil Cook, Loic Albert, and Geert Jan Talens 60 Full-day workshop (9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.); two additional smaller workshops will be held later in April
Email organizer
3/19 University of Maryland, Baltimore County,
Catonsville, MD (ILSB Room 116/AB)Trisha Ashley, Eileen Meyer, Alec Hirschauer, Christopher Clark, Hannah Wakeford, and Joel Green 70 One-day workshop
3/20-21
Cancelled due to campus closureBrigham Young University,
Provo, UTDenise Stephens 40 Two-day workshop 3/25 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
Urbana, ILKedar A. Phadke 40 Email organizer
3/25-27
CancelledFederal University of Rio de Janeiro,
Rio de Janeiro, BrazilThiago Goncalves 30 3/30-4/1 Centro de Astronomı́a, Universidad de Antofagasta,
Antofagasta, ChileJeremy Tregloan-Reed 100 Email organizer TBD University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZIrene Shivaei 100 Q&A session
Email organizer
4/9
CancelledSpace Telescope Science Institute,
Baltimore, MD (Muller Auditorium)Trisha Ashley, Eileen Meyer, Alec Hirschauer, Christopher Clark, Hannah Wakeford, and Joel Green 70 Proposal Hack Day
TBD New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, NMDenise Stephens 25
training
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The NASA James Webb Space Telescope, developed in partnership with ESA and CSA, is operated by AURA’s Space Telescope Science Institute.