During the Autumn 2020 version of the course "Astronomy from observation to outreach" the students a.o. gained experience in the various aspects of publishing a scientific paper within the discipline of observational astronomy via actual work on a real paper. The work covers both data analysis and presentation in text and illustrations. After the course proper the full paper was finished in a voluntary study group involving some of the students.

"Being a part of the process needed to write a real paper has been interesting; seeing for yourself how to get from data reductions to the final produce," Jacob Bay Thomsen explains. His part of the work has been the analysis of radial velocities via spectra from the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

VLT UT-1 - 4 at the Paranalobservatory in Chile has produced the stellar spectra. Photo: ESO

”It is one thing to start working on a paper and do all the background work for it. Going through all the steps needed afterwards in order to be allowed to publish it is something quite different. As a physics student it is very relevant experiencing the full process, preparing one for maybe one day to do it yourself," Marta Lønne Jensen adds. She has worked on variability of the observed double star using photometry from the Kepler Space Telescope.

”This has been a fine experience and my impression is that being directly involved in real scientific work has been very motivating for the students. We have a lot of experiences to work from for the same course this coming Autumn, where we intend also to work on a scientific paper. And you can still apply for the course," Karsten Brogaard, responsible for the course adds.

The theme for the paper is a.o. measuring of precise and good stellar parameters in order to determine the age of the stellar cluster NGC 6791. The paper has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, and if you are curious preprint is already available here.