Astronomy & Astrophysics Resources

Data archives & catalogues

• Gaia Archive — Astrometry, photometry, spectroscopy, and derived products from ESA’s Gaia mission.
• VizieR — Collection of published astronomical catalogues.
• SIMBAD — Object database providing identifiers, measurements, bibliography, and cross-matches.
• German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO) — German contribution to the international Virtual Observatory ecosystem.

Analysis & modelling

• TOPCAT — Interactive exploration, manipulation, and visualisation of tabular astronomical data.
• SAOImage DS9 — Visualisation and analysis of astronomical imaging data.
• HEASoft — Analysis suite for high-energy astrophysics, including spectral, timing, and imaging data.
• IRAF — Long-standing software environment for astronomical image and spectral analysis.
• MESA — Open-source framework for stellar-evolution calculations.

Literature & research

• NASA ADS — Literature database for astronomy, astrophysics, and physics.
• arXiv — Open repository for scientific preprints.

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Scientific Computing & Programming

These are some of the tools and frameworks I regularly use or find useful for computational research.

Development

• Visual Studio Code — Code editing, development, debugging, and remote workflows.
• Jupyter — Interactive notebooks and computational workflows.
• Python — My primary language for scientific analysis, modelling, and machine learning.
• C++ — Used for performance-critical scientific modelling and simulation development.
• Anaconda — Python environments and package management for scientific workflows.

Scientific Python

• NumPy — Numerical arrays and vectorised computation.
• SciPy — Scientific algorithms, optimisation, integration, statistics, and numerical methods.
• Pandas — Tabular data manipulation and analysis.
• Astropy — Astronomy-focused Python ecosystem.
• Matplotlib — Scientific plotting and visualisation.
• Seaborn — Statistical data visualisation.
• Plotly — Interactive and browser-based visualisation.

Machine Learning

• Scikit-learn — Classical machine-learning and model-selection tools.
• TensorFlow — Deep-learning and machine-learning framework.

Scientific data formats

• HDF5 — Efficient storage of large and complex numerical datasets.
• FITS — Standard data format widely used in astronomy.

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Computing & Research Workflow

• Ubuntu — Linux environment widely used for scientific computing and HPC.
• Lubuntu — Lightweight Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.
• MobaXterm — Remote access and Unix tools for Windows.
• VirtualBox — Cross-platform virtualisation.
• VMware Workstation — Virtual-machine environment.
• Overleaf — Collaborative LaTeX writing and publishing.
• Mendeley — Literature and reference management.
• Notion — Notes, project organisation, and knowledge management.

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Careers, Conferences & Community

• AAS Job Register — Academic and research opportunities in astronomy and astrophysics.
• EAS Job Directory — European astronomy and astrophysics opportunities.
• Astronomy Meetings — Astronomy conferences and meetings curated by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.

Heidelberg Physics

For prospective students, Rohan Kulkarni’s Heidelberg interview guide provides a useful overview of the application and interview process.

The Heidelberg University course catalogue provides information on available courses and modules.

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Building an Academic Website

A few resources that may be useful if you are building your own academic or personal website:

• GitHub Pages — Free static-site hosting directly from a GitHub repository.
• Hugo — Fast, open-source static-site generator.
• Hugo themes — Starting points for academic and research websites.
• Go — The programming language underlying Hugo.
• Getting started with Hugo and GitHub Pages — Introductory video guide.