PHYS 270LAstronomical Observations, Instrumentation, and Data Analysis Laboratory

55% liked it68% easy61% useful

From 20 ratings and 5 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• Learned how to use DS9 and other than that, this course was pretty useless and similar to other lab courses such as 256L. It wasn't hard, but the reports take forever and are just calculating uncertainties which we have all done lots of already. It is also very clear that the lab manuals and labs themselves are very old. We got to use the observatory which was pretty cool! Only took one picture of the moon though and it took about 5 minutes. The lab exam was also completely unnecessary.

  Aug 2023 · didn’t like it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• seems a bit unncessary, all you learn is how to propagate uncertainties (which we already know) and one of the labs was literally a repetition of 256L. bad 👎

  Aug 2023 · didn’t like it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• They finally realized that making people do lab reports in the lab whilst doing the lab was a bad idea

  Jul 2026 · liked itOn UW FlowRemove this

• Lab 1 was cool because we used DS9 to analyze real hubble data, and part of Lab 4 was cool because we used the telescope! Unfortunately those were the only real pros. I really disliked Labs 2 and 3, mostly because data collection and analysis was very tedious. The labs took ages and grading seemed a bit harsh. Lab 4 was also quite confusing and a lot of it is left for you to figure out, which seems great initially except they clearly have some expectations for this which aren't clearly stated in the instructions. The exam felt a bit difficult as well.

  Aug 2023 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

• One of the few labs where I feel I actually picked up useful skills. Plus no lab exam!

  Aug 2016 · liked itOn UW FlowRemove this