Some Ideas For Astronomy-Related Projects
=========================================

These were culled from a list emailed to me by Geoff Mathews
<[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])>

* exoplanet exaggerator - read data on known exoplanets and present an
  exaggerated "by eye" view; this would show the patch of sky with the
  star and make it visibly flicker (real transits cause changes in
  brightness at the 0.01% level...), and for systems with a measured
  doppler shift, exaggerated blue and redshift of the star.  There are a
  few modified versions of this I can think of, too - for example, line
  up several stars side by side for comparison  

* exoplanet simulator - the user has sliders to adjust observed
  inclination, stellar mass, planet mass, size, and orbital distance,
  and the simulator generates a lightcurve, velocity curve, , and (if
  the exaggerator exists) exaggerated view of the star.  Similar to the
  following two tools, but having the option of seeing the full
  light-curve over time (not just the simulation of a single transit)
  and with the radial velocity simulator, having the option of showing
  an exaggerated wobble of the star

* exoplanet magic zoom view - see a magically zoomed in view of an
  exoplanet system, both the view from Earth and a "top-down" view with
  exaggerated stellar wobble.  This would be great to pair with a
  representation of the lightcurve and velocity curve.  

* spiral galaxy dark matter simulator - make a simple galaxy with stars
  arranged in a disk with circular orbits, and have an interface for
  adjusting the dark matter distribution and see the resulting velocity
  curve

* intermediate complexity atmosphere simulator - pro-tools are too
  complex for basic teaching, but existing simple models don't include
  tie-ins to spectroscopy.  It would be great to have a simplified
  atmosphere model that would allow users to adjust CO2 and H2O levels,
  see the resulting atmospheric absorption spectrum and temperature

The exoplanet tools were all inspired by:  
[http://astro.unl.edu/naap/esp/animations/transitSimulator.html](http://astro.unl.edu/naap/esp/animations/transitSimulator.html)  
[http://astro.unl.edu/naap/esp/animations/radialVelocitySimulator.html](http://astro.unl.edu/naap/esp/animations/radialVelocitySimulator.html)  
but these lack a few useful aspects and combinations  

If you have any questions about the above, please contact Geoff 
<[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])> or myself
(Grond)
<[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])>.

If you want to take on one of these projects, please let Geoff know, and
make a commit to this file noting that you're working on the project
(talk to me and I'll give you push access to the repo).