A Beginner's Guide to Working with Astronomical Data

1 Introduction
	1.1 Types of data
	1.2 Types of tools
	1.3 Concepts and operations
	1.4 Software/language choices
2 Data basics: images, spectra, tables
	2.1 Images: Colour, brightness, pixels
	2.2 Images: PSF and noise
	2.3 Images: darkframes and flatfielding
	2.4 Images: astronomical information
	2.5 Spectra
	2.6 Data cubes
	2.7 High-level data: catalogues and tables
3 SAOImage DS9 and astronomical images
	3.1 Loading a Hubble image
	3.2 A first look at the Eagle Nebula M16
	3.3 Coordinates: Finding your way around the image
	3.4 Meta-Information: the FITS header
	3.5 Making a colour image
	3.6 Catalogs
	3.7 Photometry with regions and statistics
	3.8 Profiles
4 TOPCAT and table data
	4.1 Opening a table file
	4.2 Making a sky plot
	4.3 Connecting with a Virtual Observatory (VO) service
	4.4 Basic ADQL queries
	4.5 Selections and subsets
	4.6 More on plotting
	4.7 Histograms
	4.8 A quick look at a spectrum
5 Getting started with Python
	5.1 Installing Python
	5.2 Using Python in Spyder
	5.3 Modules
6 Basic operations with Python
	6.1 Meet your new versatile calculator
	6.2 Units and constants
	6.3 Random numbers
	6.4 Strings
	6.5 Conditions
	6.6 User-defined functions
	6.7 Timing your code
7 Taming long data sets: Lists in Python
	7.1 A list of galaxies
	7.2 Doing something element by element
	7.3 Operations involving more than one list
	7.4 Creating lists simultaneously
	7.5 Numpy arrays
	7.6 Variable types, lists, arrays and speed
	7.7 Strings and base n numbers as lists
8 Basic plotting with Python and Matplotlib
	8.1 Plotting a function
	8.2 Making a plot look better
	8.3 Annotating plots
	8.4 Figure size
	8.5 Scatter plots
	8.6 Fitting data
	8.7 Histograms
	8.8 Saving figures
9 Importing table data into Python
	9.1 Opening a FITS table in python
	9.2 Opening an ASCII table in python
	9.3 Making a table query using pyvo
10 Astronomical image manipulation with Python
	10.1 FITS files and python
	10.2 Displaying (showing) an image
	10.3 Pixelwise operations
11 A simple simulation
	11.1 Step-by-step numerical integration: Euler method
	11.2 Numerical errors
	11.3 Velocity Verlet algorithm
	11.4 A simple two-dimensional simulation
12 Conclusion