Adapted from document made by: Anke van Dyk, Jason Poh, Katharina Lutz

Welcome to the journey of astro research! In this document you will find all sorts of nuggets to help you get set up with the right tools in order for you do your amazing research.

1. Useful advice for starting your PhD
   • Twenty things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD
   • What not to do in graduate school
   • How to write your PhD thesis
   • The PhD grind (free ebook)
   • Richard Hamming: You and Your Research (talk)
2. Common astro software and tools

• Astronomy Source Code Library for citing the source code that you use
• Guide to Astrophysical software
• The Unix Shell: Summary of Basic Commands
• A Beginner’s Guide to Working with Astronomical Data

• Homebrew - package manager for missing tools
• iTerm2 - alternative and cool command line tool

• Anaconda - Common Python distribution used for scientific computing.
  • NumPy - Array manipulation
  • SciPy - numerical library
  • Pandas - data manipulation
  • Matplotlib - plotting software
  • Plotly - cooler plotting software
  • Glue - multi-dimensional linked-data exploration
• Astropy - collection of packages for astro-specific computation.
• Scikit-learn - Machine learning package
• astroML - Python Datamining for Astronomy
• pymc3 - Markov Chain Monte Carlo package
• CASA - Interferometric Radio Astronomy Data Reduction Tool

In the terminal: to scroll through the line, use alt and click

• IRAF -
• ds9

• Simbad - Astronomical Database (separate query available in python with astroquery)
• Vizier - Database of Catalogues and Tables (also available in astroquery)
• Aladin -
• TopCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
• NOAO Data Lab (Wide-field astronomical surveys; can run stuff in the cloud)
• IRSA - Infrared Science Archive

• LaTeX and https://www.latex-project.org/about/
• Overleaf - Cloud Based LaTeX editor
• TeXstudio - Local LaTeX editor for MacOS and Linux

• Transmit
  • Paid software, but the best file transfer client for MacOS
• Mosh
  • If you have a bad internet connection, you can try using this alternative to ssh.

• Mendeley

3. Papers to get you started in your field

• https://arxiv.org
• ADS

Python:

• A Whirlwind Tour of Python

Modeling:

• Data Recipes: Fitting a model to data
• Comparison of different MCMC and Nested sampling packages

Astronomy:

• Distance Measures in Cosmology