I have been spending some quality time working on videos for a variety of projects. One major project involved my heading out to the AAS meeting in Austin earlier this year. That took me away from a few classes that really needed some tech training. They were working on analysis of light curves taken from the Kepler Mission data set. That type of thing is easy to do in person, but it is one thing to be a student in a class with the teacher…. it’s a whole other ball game to be away from the teacher and trying this stuff out all alone. What to do? Videos! There’s some great screen capture software out there that allows one to record audio from a microphone while showing what the PC is doing at the same time. The results, some great videos now making history on YouTube:

• Kepler-1: http://youtu.be/Tyw-C6stCRM
• Kepler-2: http://youtu.be/ySdRQQ923Rk
• Kepler-3: Quasi-periodic star example: http://youtu.be/_7Ovcvz_L_g

Those being done, I decided to help out with another external-to-school project which needed some training in the astronomy software MaxIm DL. The result of this was a series of videos to show all the basic operations of the software. They wanted to learn about calibrations, darks, flats, biases, color imaging, etc. The result? Good enough reviews. A lot of people are sending in emails to say “keep ‘em coming!” I am amazed actually. Glad to be of help, people. That’s what the videos are for. So here they are:

• Opening, viewing and closing FITS files: http://youtu.be/3i-WZ8IPxvc
• MaxIm DL training video describing the use of the FITS header window and the Information window. http://youtu.be/ditzdO8zB9U
• A description of the multitude of signal and noise types that are inherent to CCD imaging. http://youtu.be/JENmm8uX2FQ
• How to subtract thermal signal and thermal noise from your images. http://youtu.be/XqicMzZ8cI0
• http://youtu.be/ZC7AtGz0Y2A
• The use of bias frames in MaxIm DL and how they scale dark frames for calibration.  http://youtu.be/r7CPvZg4fBU
• A description of how to apply darks, biases, and flats all at once to a slew of images…. the EASY way! http://youtu.be/PD3tXJ1Yqak
• Stacking images (adding in this case) to improve image quality.  http://youtu.be/yBQ81rv3XT0
• How to stack your filtered images to make a color image using MaxIm DL. This explains simple RGB color stacking.  http://youtu.be/edcMZ3h4UM0
• MaxIm DL: the introduction to luminance layering color image processing. http://youtu.be/0hh8xfDKwMQ
• MaxIm DL luminance layering technique part 2. http://youtu.be/DRARrlN0yvU
• Doing basic time series photometry with MaxIm DL. Precise comparison and reference magnitudes can be found at http://www.aavso.org http://youtu.be/wCM7835SnwU
• What is FWHM and why is it important? We also look at stellar profiles and graphs. http://youtu.be/UnnxzqMJuts
• Using MaxIm DL to perform plate solutions (astrometric reductions) on your CCD images using a standard star catalog. http://youtu.be/hhULQINsuww

They start with the very basic information and work their way up to the more complex topics: Astrometric reductions, time series photometry and the like. Enjoy!