Course Overview#
This is the A&A MSc course on Computational Astrophysics.
Goals#
Understanding algorithms#
The main goal of this class is to understand how the core numerical methods that we use to solve problems in astrophysics work. Today, you can find libraries that implement much of these algorithms for us, with nice, easy-to-use interfaces. For example, the SciPy library for python.
However, before we use a “black box” implementation of a method, we should understand the basics of the algorithm, how it works, and importantly, what are the underlying assumptions.
For this reason, we will implement most of the methods here from scratch, first, before moving onto any libraries.
Programming experience#
The second goal of this class is to get everyone more comfortable with programming, so you should ask questions about programming as they arise during the semester.
In this course, I will mostly use python, since it makes interactive coding during the lectures a lot easier.
Note
You are however free to use whichever programming language you are most comfortable with for the homework/project. I will do interactive demonstrations primarily in python but we encourage you to try out a new language (e.g. Julia, C/C++) if you are already very comfortable in python .
Some resources:
Useful python class notes from Mike Zingalge (Stony Brook) are available at : https://sbu-python-class.github.io/python-science/Introduction.html
C++ class notes from Mike Zingale (Stony Brook) are available at: https://zingale.github.io/phy504/