Chandra Data Science:
Novel Methods in Computing and Statistics for X-ray Astronomy

August 2021

Virtual (online)
Hosted by the Chandra X-ray Center

With its ability to detect the characteristics of individual photons, high spatial and spectral resolution and its low-background, the Chandra X-ray Observatory provides unprecedented perspectives of the X-ray universe. In simplest terms, the event list for a single observation is a database of photons; typically with 100,000 rows of data but sometimes up to 50 million. Careful scrutiny, visualization, and comparison to physical models of the event list — at the heart of Chandra science — has many similarities to data science. The Chandra community has provided numerous tools and techniques that advance Chandra science. This year’s CXC summer science workshop will highlight the science enabled by such contributions.

The scope of this workshop will cover a large range of science topics and the methods that enable them from landmark contributions (DS9, CIAO, Sherpa, XSPEC, etc.) to novel statistical techniques (Bayesian/Poisson statistical methods, machine-learning classification, etc.). We will invite contributions on timing, imaging, and spectroscopy methods applied to Chandra observations of stars, neutron stars, black holes, AGN, galaxy clusters or any other field of X-ray astronomy, in addition to contributions from science enhanced by multi-mission and multiwavelength studies.

The workshop will occur virtually mid-August 2021 (17th-19th and 24th-26th). We will host ~6 days with 3 hours of science programming per day. Science programming will include invited (30 minutes), contributed (20 minutes), and lightning (5 min) talks plus a panel discussion focused on Large Catalogs, Classification, and Cross-Matching. Talks will focus on science, but additional programming (self-organized tutorials, additional panel discussions) may be provided outside of these sessions depending on demand.

A playlist of the talks is available on our YouTube channel.

Please contact us at cxcworkshop@cfa.harvard.edu with any questions.

Invited Speakers

Important Dates

Registration

Registration is free. However, real-time participation in a given Zoom session will be limited to the first 100 guests for a particular session. A live YouTube stream will be made available and monitored for questions to accommodate overflow participants.

All attendees are expected to abide by the code of conduct for Chandra X-ray Center events.

To register for the meeting please complete the registration form.

Science Organizing Committee