Past and current members of the UW Astronomy Department were recently featured in a Wired Magazine article about Coding in Astronomy:
“Back when telescopes produced less data, astronomers could get by on teaching themselves. “The old model was you go to your telescope—or you log in remotely because you’re fancy—you get your data, you download it on your computer, you make a plot, you write a paper, and you’re a scientist,” says Rawls, who is now a postdoc at the University of Washington. “Now, it’s not practical to download all the data.” And “a plot” is laughable. You just try using graph paper to nail down the correlation function that shows the distribution of millions of galaxies (go ahead; I’ll wait).”
Read the full text on “For Modern Astronomers, it’s Learn to Code or Get Left Behind” via Wired. The article features UW astro alum Walkowicz, current members Rawls & Moeyens, LSST, and E-Science.