{"id":1202,"date":"2023-12-19T11:39:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T11:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shruti.karandikar.org\/?page_id=1202"},"modified":"2024-06-03T13:15:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T13:15:51","slug":"programming","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/shruti.karandikar.org\/?page_id=1202","title":{"rendered":"Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Seven years ago, the Event Horizon Telescope<\/a> released the first image of a black hole. I dug into what they had done, watched a bunch of videos and read articles. That’s when I realized that a large part of generating this image had to do with software implementation. Other telescopes capture data in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which is mapped to visible light. These are the pictures we see. These photos are even more processed to remove noise or enhance the image to make it sharper. All of this remapping and processing is done in software. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also visited IUCAA<\/a> for National Science day this year. Among the exhibits, I met a post doc who described how he was processing spectrometry data to identify the composition of stars in distant galaxies. This involved a lot of processing on a high performance cluster \u2013 software being used in the service of astronomy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more images I saw, I started to wonder how these pictures were obtained. I used to think it was because of better quality telescopes, which is true, but it’s the advancement of software and hardware that makes the quality better. I used to wonder about the kinds of discoveries people used to make. Like finding the oldest galaxies, and now I know how they are dependent on software. This is what got me interested in programming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big news after the Event Horizon telescope was JWST<\/a>. Yes, the images are spectacular and yes it’s aiding science but how exactly is it doing what it’s doing? Before even taking the pictures the telescope had to open up in space and align itself precisely. Every segment had to be moved in steps of micrometers. This was done by actuators which are a bunch of electronics that are involved to get the telescope working. Similarly, it’s taking multi-day exposures of a region of the sky. The telescope has to be pointed in that direction without moving, as it’s going around the sun at the L2 point<\/a>. How does it maintain itself at that position while looking into deep space? I realized that there are some things that are not just software, but there’s also electronics involved and to answer these questions,I need to learn the basics of electronics and software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started learning how to program because of EHT. After JWST, I realized that the data that’s being processed is coming from hardware. And I started asking questions about the hardware. To improve my understanding of it, I started working with the Raspberry Pi<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Notes for Further Research<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

EHT: <\/p>\n\n\n\n