This notebook aims to introduce some topics around quasar spectra, redshift and spectral variability. It is suitable for introductory level physics or astronomy majors at the tertiary level but could also be adapted for more advanced high school students.
This tutorial is also available on GitHub. Example solutions are also available. It is suggested that you give the first version to your students and keep the solutions notebook for yourself and your tutors. It is probably best to get your students to use Sciserver so that they don’t need to download software onto their laptop.
How to run this tutorial on SciServer
A specific image is available for working with SDSS data. In order to access both SDSS data and the suite of software tools you will need, create an account then when you create a new container follow these steps:
- Choose the
SDSSDocker image. This image contains thesdss_accesspython package, as well asastropy,astroquery,specutilsand other useful libraries. - Include the
SDSS SASdata volume. It will be mounted in the Jupyter session under/home/idies/workspace/sdss_sas/. - Once in a notebook, make sure the
py39python kernel is selected.