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Ram458 wrote: ↑January 5th, 2023, 11:20 am Does anyone know a good place to get started? This is my first time participating in astronomy and I was wondering where you can find the information that you need to learn in order to prepare for this event.

Hey there! Astronomy is an awesome event, and it's awesome to hear you're doing it!

As pumptato-cat said, the official Science Olympiad rules allow use of one laptop per person, as long as it's not connected to the Internet. So, you can download anything to your laptop for offline access during the event. You can download a PDF copy of the rules (for free!) to learn about the topics that'll be tested on Astronomy this Science Olympiad season. Some coaches don't hand out the rules manual to their students, but it's best to have a copy for yourself so that you can check the rules for your events any time you want.

As for resources, our wiki page for Astronomy contains a high-level overview of crucial topics, and if you scroll to the bottom of the wiki page, there are also notes made by other students who've shared their work for anybody to use. For deep-sky objects, often Wikipedia or the Chandra X-ray observatory website have a general overview of the object. Because astronomy (as a discipline) is extremely broad, Astronomy (as an event) has a lot of different things that can appear on tests, even when limited to just topics in the rules. So, it really helps to grab a physics textbook and familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of physics in the weeks leading up to your competition. You can even download free textbooks from a variety of sites like OpenStax or LibreTexts, but because you'll only have an hour or less to take your test, most of the benefit comes from reading these books before competition day, and not during it.

Welcome to the Astronomy family, and good luck in your competitions!

Ram458 wrote: ↑January 5th, 2023, 11:20 am Does anyone know a good place to get started? This is my first time participating in astronomy and I was wondering where you can find the information that you need to learn in order to prepare for this event.

Building on what Gary said, I think the official Chandra resources here could be helpful to you too.

A lot of people ask for recommendations on math so I thought I'd just share this set of ~25 practice problems I made. I would argue that, if you can answer these questions, you know how to solve most of the math questions you'll encounter on any test (sometimes even all!). Each question has a subsection, like "Distance to an object given its absolute and apparent magnitude", which helps you identify any question on a test.

These questions aren't particularly tricky, they just help you get used to the type of scenarios you see. Any time you see a math question, I recommend writing out what quantities you know and what quantity or quantities you need to find. These will correspond directly to the subsections on this problem set, so really the difficult part for most astronomy questions is identifying the scenario you're working with—once you master this, you'll find math problems a lot easier!

To re-emphasize, however, this doesn't cover every single question type you'll encounter, just the most common ones. However, I think the skill of identifying scenarios is more useful than plug-and-chug practice with different formulas. Try making your own scenario names like on this document if you find this sort of practice useful!

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gfVyTv ... sp=sharing

Will the tests ever deviate from the original DSO names (i.e, using alternate names for DSOs)? There are a couple of really common alternate names, but sometimes there's like over 10 for just one DSO, which I think is because of all the different catalogs which named the object. So, how often do you see alternate names on tests?

Awesome314159 wrote: ↑February 6th, 2023, 10:21 pm Will the tests ever deviate from the original DSO names (i.e, using alternate names for DSOs)? There are a couple of really common alternate names, but sometimes there's like over 10 for just one DSO, which I think is because of all the different catalogs which named the object. So, how often do you see alternate names on tests?

In my experience (and others can add theirs too), I haven't seen alternate names all that often. If it's a very common alternate name (eg an actual name and not a string of numbers, or one from a well-known catalog like NGC or the Messier catalog), then it might come up, but other names (as you pointed out) exist in large numbers and it would be unreasonable to ask about them. The only reason I typically look for more obscure alternate names is to search up in databases like SIMBAD since sometimes the name on the rules isn't recognized by them.

AstroClarinet wrote: ↑February 9th, 2023, 5:11 pm

Awesome314159 wrote: ↑February 6th, 2023, 10:21 pm Will the tests ever deviate from the original DSO names (i.e, using alternate names for DSOs)? There are a couple of really common alternate names, but sometimes there's like over 10 for just one DSO, which I think is because of all the different catalogs which named the object. So, how often do you see alternate names on tests?

In my experience (and others can add theirs too), I haven't seen alternate names all that often. If it's a very common alternate name (eg an actual name and not a string of numbers, or one from a well-known catalog like NGC or the Messier catalog), then it might come up, but other names (as you pointed out) exist in large numbers and it would be unreasonable to ask about them. The only reason I typically look for more obscure alternate names is to search up in databases like SIMBAD since sometimes the name on the rules isn't recognized by them.

Seconding what AstroClarinet said. I think as long as you know the main name and common alternate names, you shouldn't have to worry about other obscure designations. Good tests will (hopefully) focus on actually knowing and understanding science instead of whether you happen to have a random string of numbers in your notes. Back when I competed in the event, I would copy/paste whatever Wikipedia had for alternate names just to be safe and wouldn't go beyond that.

Hello,

I cant find the apparent and absolute magnitudes for PSR J2030+4415. Does anyone know the apparent and absolute magnitudes for PSR J2030+4415?

Thanks

Hey,

From my limited searching, I was unable to find those numbers as well. For this DSO it is not really what is significant about the object so I would not be worried about that, but it is always good to have all information possible. There are distance estimations, but I didn't see how they found those values either.

Hello,

I can't find the apparent and absolute magnitudes for NaSt1. Does anyone know the apparent and absolute magnitudes for NaSt1?

Thanks

I've been hearing a bit of noise about JS9 lately, so I wanted to do what I could to ease some of the stress here.

For those of you stressing about learning or practicing JS9, here's what I'd recommend you do:

1. First, just open JS9 for 20-30 minutes and mess around with it. See what all you can figure out yourself. The Science Olympiad version of JS9 (which contains some extra features) is at chandra.si.edu/js9, and the main version is js9.si.edu. Either will work, but sometimes the Science Olympiad version breaks for no apparent reason.
2. Now, look at the JS9 guide and activities at chandra.si.edu/js9. Work through some of these to start getting a better feel for JS9.
3. Now, work out some practice questions and test problems on your own. Here are some of the ones I compiled from last year (along with some additional resources), and this year, UT, Rickards, SOAPS, MIT, and BirdSO Satellite (when it comes out) all have JS9. Some of these have solutions, but most don't. However, feel free to ask in this thread, or ping me or something, I (and many others) would be happy to clear up any confusion or issues with JS9.
4. To go deeper, you may want to start looking at some images on your own, or exploring other analysis functions. The Astronomy/JS9 Wiki has lots of information, but it's a bit wordy. You can find lots of FITS files, as well, on the Unofficial Chandra Archive that you can look at.

Also, from some competition experience, one of the most important things is Knowing how to open files. Keep this in mind when opening files:

• Avoid clicking on the link and downloading the file. This will just bring you issues. Instead, use one of these methods:
• Drag-and-drop the file into the JS9 interface (the part where the image actually gets displayed)
• Copy the link, navigate to File > Open Remote, and paste the link into the dialogue box.

If you download a file (which is probably 50+ megabytes), you can get it into the JS9 window by using File > Open Local (which will take forever to upload), then go to Analysis > Upload fits to make tasks available (or whatever else like that, which will also take a very long time). It's really not worth it to download files, and will honestly just cause issues.

Again, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or issues. Best of luck, and have some fun with this cool image analysis software!