Stacking optical spectra of galaxies

Posted on 30/10/2014 by Tom

Here’s a short animation showing the effects of stacking up spectra. Measuring the intensities and equivalent widths of emission lines can be tricky in galaxy spectra where the signal-to-noise (S/N) is low, mostly due to difficulty in determining the baseline … Read more →

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Solutions to errors with APLpy show_regions()

Posted on 14/09/2013 by Tom

Trying to display Ds9 region files on top of APLpy plots threw up two errors. Creating an aplpy.FITSFigure subplot using some standard code in a python script worked fine, until the line where the show_regions() call to pyregion encountered an … Read more →

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MethylCal: A Python project for Windows

Posted on 29/08/2013 by Tom

This week, I jumped on the opportunity to apply my skills to a different field of research. On Tuesday, researchers working in the Stem Cells, Ageing and Molecular Physiology Unit at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool … Read more →

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Creating figures from FITS images with APLpy

Posted on 29/07/2013 by Tom

The Python module APLpy is a great tool for plotting professional-looking astro images. Short for Astronomical Plotting Library in Python, APLpy aims to produce publication-quality plots of astronomical images in FITS file format. As I’ve been using it a lot … Read more →

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