Laura Chomiuk edited innovations.tex  about 9 years ago

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\subsection{Regular encounters with "real" data and observatory archives}  \label{sec:encounters-with-data}  Lab exercises in AST 208 are created with the goal of yielding an authentic research experience for students. Our redesigned labs are therefore built around real data, accessed from astronomical archives and the MSU Campus Observatory, just as professional astronomers do. The data are not ``sanitized", but contain imperfections that the students (and instructors!) must contend with: poor seeing, cosmic rays, inaccurate metadata, etc. Dealing with such often-unpredictable flaws builds student problem-solving skills, while illustrating the everyday challenges of observational astronomy.