So the community bonding period of GSoC has ended and the coding period is officially underway. In my last blogpost, I had outlined the basic principles of General Relativity that go into my project. I had also mentioned, that the next blog will have details about the coding process. However, things had to be slowed down considerably, due to the announcement of closure of my academic session and some logistical issues. This has also affected my blog schedule, as I could not work on a blog, that was supposed to be up 2 weeks ago. However, I am pleased to inform that all the issues are sorted out now, leaving the rest of the summer free for me to delve into the project. Whew. I am also exceedingly grateful to my mentors, who have been understanding throughout. As for details on the code implementation for my project, I have decided to break it up across the blogs, as "Progress Reports" (bland, I know), in order to provide a better understanding of both what I am working on and my approach to it. So, read on.

Week 1 & 2: Tip-Off

Sahil Yadav

2020-06-13 09:50

The first week started off with having a video call with the mentors and trying to pave the path ahead for the next 3 months. There were 2 options: Either convert ROOT files to the hdf5 format from CTA or establish a new DL1 reader for ROOT. I decided to run some tests and get an idea about the speed and memory requirements for both the methods. We were more inclined to create a new class for the ROOT files so that we don’t have to save a separate hdf5 file for each ROOT file when using CTLearn. The reading times for both the file types were also similar, so we decided to implement a new child class for ROOT files.

In order to move ahead with this plan, I first wrote down the entire DL1DataWriter code, highlighting the hdf5 dependent parts. This way, I was able to get a better understanding of the code and its intricacies. After talking with Tjark some more, we decided to implement 2 child classes for hdf5 and ROOT which inherited the parent Writer class.

MC simulated images from MAGIC Cam 1 & 2, an event which only triggered one telescope and not the other.

After another video call, Ari suggested that I convert the ROOT files into an hdf5 file with the CTA ML Data format to understand the differences between the formats of MAGIC and CTA. Although there is already a library ctapipe_io_magic to produce the MAGICEventSource and use it for DL1DataReader and produce an hdf5 file, there were a lot of issues with trying to use it.

Community Bonding Period-GSoC20

siddharthlal25

2020-05-30 18:04

It was around 11:30 in the night on 4th of May, the Google servers glitched for a second or so but then I could see my project on the Org’s list.

Finally, I got selected for GSoC 2020 after around two months of involvement with the JuliaAstro community. Before my selection, I had primarily contributed to Photometry.jl and DustExtinction.jl, both were a part of the JuliaAstro community!

Google Summer of Code - Blog #0!

pkj-m

2020-05-30 18:04

Hey there. Welcome to the first of what is going to be a series of blog posts chronicling my journey as I participate in the Google Summer of Code this year with RADIS (registered as a sub-org under OpenAstronomy). This particular blog post, as the title suggests, is meant to give a quick introduction to GSoC as well as my organization and the project.

What is Google Summer of Code?

gsoc_journey = {“Prologue”: [“I have a Dream!!”, “GSoC’2020”]}

Amogh Desai

2020-05-24 23:32

Milky way as seen from the earth — **“Curiosity is the essence of our existence”** ~ Gene Cernan

Childhood, as stated by UNICEF is “a time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended community of caring adults.”
Thinking about it today, it seems like being connected to a continuous 240 V supply of dreams, curiosity, excitement and innocence.

Encyclopedia — Kingfisher’s Book of the Universe — My favourite encyclopedia. In mint condition after 15 years (Thank you mom for not letting me rip off the outer paper cover 😜)

One of my dreams was to be an astronomer. I remember having a lot of encyclopedias on space as a kid(Geek Alert — I have read all my encyclopedias at least 10 times😅 ). I went to NASA once and even built a model telescope (which showed an inverted 20x zoomed image).

Tryst with Astronomy and Space Science

Biswarup Banerjee

2020-05-21 04:52

Tryst with Astronomy and Computer science

When I was very young, my dad used to tell me stories of how people can float in space because of zero gravity, how brave Indian astronauts like Kalpana Chawla gave their life for the pursuit of space science and that the stars we see in the night sky are several light-years away!

Many a time I would lay down on our open terrace and stare at the never-ending sky filled with millions of stars and just ruminate on the fact that we are living in such a vast universe!

Then came high school and while randomly browsing the internet I came across a few articles written by Al Globus who happened to be one of the Board of Directors of The National Space Society.

GSoC 2020: The Start of my summer with SunPy

Abhijeet Manhas

2020-05-19 05:13

Group of youngsters looking at Planets through Binoculars — Observing Jupiter’s moons and Saturn at 2:00 AM in a pre-Exam hangout with my friends at Campus :)

The time I am writing this, the temperature has already shot up to 45 degree Celsius; clearly, Sun is usually unkind to me in the city of Vadodara, India. Everything was great, I was chilling out at my Campus IIT Mandi until the Corona thing happened. It changed my google search results for “Corona” from this …

To this :/

Background

Going back in time to my school days, I developed a great interest in Astronomy. I enjoyed Planetarium trips, national competitions; even remembering just numerical data about the cosmos! Fast-forwarding a few years, I’m at IIT Mandi completing my bachelor in Computer Science.

GSoC 2020: Blog 0 - A Brief History...

Jyotirmaya Shivottam

2020-05-18 22:14

>>> print("Hello, World!")
Hello, World!
>>>
Read more…

Week 0: The first “bug”

Sahil Yadav

2020-05-18 12:59

As a child, I used to try and count the number of stars in the sky, absolutely mesmerised by the twinkling dots. From the long nights on the roof looking above in fascination started the admiration for astronomy.

As a junior in high school, my older cousin brother introduced me to Machine Learning. Seems weird to say that, but that’s how things panned out. He was working towards his PhD at the time in swarm robotics and gave me a primer of artificial intelligence. Ever since then, I started to read up more on the subject. On reaching college, I pursued a few projects to get a better feeling of academia and the research environment.

During my sophomore year at BITS, GSoC was recommended to me by many of my seniors as a nice way to work and capitalize the summers. I glanced through the participating organizations and OpenAstronomy caught my attention. Specifically, the CTLearn sub-organization seemed like a match made in heaven, using Machine Learning algorithms for gamma-ray data.

GSoC 2020, I am going to an adventure!

Meuge

2020-05-17 10:00

Hi, you all! Let me tell you something, this is going to be the beginning of our journey together, we are going on to a spatial adventure! Sit tight, and wait for the countdown!

countdown

But first, let me introduce myself, my name is María Eugenia, though everybody knows me as Meuge.