Monday, July 31, 2006

Astronomy Internship - Day 52

Today's assignment was to find the center of the cluster in terms of x and y coordinates on our frame. This task conceptually wasn't too hard but did take me awhile. My method was to break the fame up into 20 columns each 100 pixels across and then count the number of stars in each one. I could then fit a 2nd order polynomial to this, take the derivative, and figure out where the peak was. Figuring out how to get Excel to do the counting for me took me awhile, but I eventually came up with a nice little trick.

I then did the same for the y axis by making rows and repeating the procedure.

Fun stuff.