Josh Walawender

Teaching & Outreach

Astronomy Outreach

I try to do as much astronomy outreach as possible. Particularly "star parties" where I can share views through telescopes. I've found that I really enjoy using the telescopic views to teach, rather than just to impress people with "pretty pictures". Giving people a tour of some concept such as star birth by looking at a variety of objects related to that process really makes the concepts stick.

Here are a few presentations which I've given (in pdf format). There are others that I will post here eventually.

The Birth of Stars

This is a short (~20 minute) presentation that I gave several times as part of the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station "Conversation Night" series of talks.

Introduction to Astrophotography

A short overview of astrophotography. Everything from star trails to long exposure deep sky imaging.

Observatories Slideshow

This is primarily a slideshow of photographs of several observatories which I've visited.

Development of the Modern Large Telescope

A short history of the evolution of the professional observatory telescope from the 100 inch at Mt. Wilson to the modern 8-10 meter telescopes.

Course Web pages

I was a teaching assistant (TA) for six of my semesters during grad school at Colorado. Twice for introductory courses (ASTR 1010 & 1120) and four times for the observing lab for astrophysics majors (ASTR 3510 & 3520). Links to course web pages for some of those classes can be found below.

ASTR 3520 (Fall 2005) -- Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation II: Spectroscopy (w/ Prof. John Bally)
ASTR 3520 (Fall 2003) -- Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation II: Spectroscopy (w/ Prof. John Bally)
ASTR 3510 (Spring 2003) -- Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation I: Imaging (w/ Prof. John Stocke)
ASTR 3520 (Fall 2002) -- Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation II: Spectroscopy (w/ Prof. John Bally)

Tutorials

I also generated a couple of tutorials for students while I was at at Colorado. The first is an introduction to IRAF (the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility) which is the computer program which we use to analyze the images and spectra we collect when observing. The tutorial is geared towards students in the observing classes (ASTR 3510 & 3520), but anyone looking for a general introduction to IRAF may benefit from it as well. I was also involved in a series of lectures intended to introduce undergrad and grad students here to IDL (the Interactive Data Language from RSI). I have a couple of handouts from those lectures which some might find useful, though they are incomplete.