Useful Tools for Observational Astronomers

Calling all early-career astronomers! ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

If you're just getting started with observational data, this post is for you. I've compiled a list of some of my go-to astronomical software tools that make life so much easier when working with images, catalogues, spectra, and more. Hopefully, you’ll find this list helpful—or at least save yourself a few headaches!

• 🔭 SAOImageDS9: An absolute must-have. The very first thing I do after downloading a FITS file? Open it in DS9. It’s quick, intuitive, and super helpful for inspecting images on the fly. Whether you're adjusting contrast, zooming in on a region, or overlaying catalog info, DS9 has your back.

From Ds9 website.

• 📊 Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables (TOPCAT): TOPCAT is your best friend when it comes to catalogues and tables. Want to cross-match sources, make a scatter plot of your parameters, or explore a giant catalog without losing your mind? TOPCAT does it all—fast. And yes, it plays nicely with DS9 too.

  
  

  ⚡ Plots with just a few clicks? Yes please!

  
  

  📸 Pro tip: You can connect DS9 with Topcat for even more power!

  
  

  

  Credits: Mark Taylor

  
  

• 🌌 Legacy Sky Viewer: It provides images and spectra for many regions of the sky using different datasets and surveys. It is great to check how other images compare to our images and check availability of spectra or emission in other wavelengths!

• 📡 Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy (CARTA): Working with radio data cubes? CARTA is sleek, modern, and a joy to use. Great interface, and designed with multi-dimensional data in mind.

  
  

• 📚 VizieR + SIMBAD+Aladin: Searching for a catalogue of galaxy clusters in the literature? Or maybe a catalogue of galaxies? Vizier is a great start. It has many catalogues available there and a lot of filters that can help you find the dataset you are looking for! In the same website (but in different tabs) ,you will also find the Simbad Astronomical Database and the Aladin Sky Atlas that can be great to find objects and check how they look in the sky.

  
  

• 🛰️ NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED): Also great to find extragalactic objects that were catalogued before, you can specify the objects characteristics and positions in the sky.

  
  

• 🐍 Jupyter: Great to deal with python codes. I use it a lot, all the time!

  
  

• 💻 Visual Studio: A must have! It will help you organise your Python code and find possible bugs.

✨ Did I miss your favorite tool?

Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear what other software you like to use when working with astronomical data. 🪐👩‍💻