Homework #7

Due November 19, 2014

I have pulled an image of M33 off the NASA Extragalactic Database. It was originally in FITS format. In order to open fits you must have access to the astronomy user's libraray. Getting access to that library of routines would be a hassle for many of us right now. So I opened up the image myself and saved it as a binary file (see Chapter 12) called m33.dat.

Download the file from this site. The image is a 1000x1000 array of integers. Write an IDL procedure to open it read it into an array called 'image'. Plot the image to the screen.

Then plot a line of intensities across the image. image[*,500]

Find the brightest point in the image. How bright is it? Where is it?

What is the typical brigtness per pixel of the galaxy near its center?