High-Level Project Summary
In our project, we developed a simulation of an exoplanet revolving around a star as well as an animated light curve. By playing the light curve at the right time, we show that the star's flux dips when the planet is in front of the star. This project solves the challenge by allowing users to better understand extrinsic stellar variability. This is important because visualizations can help with investigating why and how a star’s brightness can change.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The goal of our project was to create visualizations that would help users understand extrinsic stellar variability. We created two visualizations: an animated light curve and a simulation of a planet revolving around a star. In the demo video, the animated light curve displays how flux changes as the planet revolves around the star. The star's flux dips when the planet is in front of the star which shows an example of stellar variability. We used Python and several Python packages to create these visualizations.
We had hoped to achieve an interactive visualization which allows the user to change the star and exoplanet radii to show how those parameters would affect the light curve. We also had plans to incorporate space agency data which allows users to pick a star and display its animated light curve.
Space Agency Data
Due to time constraints, we did not use any space agency data.
Hackathon Journey
The Space Apps experience has been a great learning experience for all of us. We learned how to animate plots and create simulations using Python. We all had a mutual interest in stellar objects and stellar variability and we wanted to explore those topics with this challenge. Our approach to developing this project was to keep the educational purpose of the project in mind. We wanted to focus on helping the user(s) understand extrinsic stellar variability better. To overcome challenges, our team relied on individual strengths and experiences. We would like to thank NASA for this opportunity to explore astronomy through a computational challenge.
References
- https://avanderburg.github.io/tutorial/tutorial2.html
- https://pytransit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia-users/credits
- https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/documentation/GDR3/Gaia_archive/chap_datamodel/sec_dm_simulation_tables/ssec_dm_gaia_universe_model.html
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28074461/animating-growing-line-plot-in-python-matplotlib
- https://github.com/hpparvi/PyTransit/blob/master/notebooks/001_simple_broadband_parameter_estimation.ipynb
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnANVqomONY
- https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/images
Tags
#TwinkleTwinkle #TwinkleTwinkleLittleStar #NCSU #Wolfpack #Python #NASA #Raleigh #NorthCarolina #TimeConstraints #DataVizualization