last revised 3/16/18

Project Report Format

Project reports should contain the path you took from start to finish. The format is parallel to that of a published astronomical research paper. After the main body of the report a paragraph must be included that describes the contribution of each team member to the project. Project writeups should be between 5-8 double-spaced, single-sided pages, plus tables, figures, and references. Organize the report into these sections:

• Introduction, containing the motivation and background for the project, including relevant information about your specific object.
• Observations and Data Reduction, describing the steps you took to acquire and analyze your data. This should be sufficiently detailed so that a reader can follow your observing and analysis procedures, but not so minute-by-minute or keystroke-by-keystroke that the reader feels like he/she IS actually experiencing all your hours of toil! Be sure to include a table of your observations, giving observing-log information: date, weather conditions, object, telescope, filter, exposure time, observers.
• Results and Discussion, where you describe what you actually observed, the results you extracted from your data, how this compares with what you expected, problems you encountered and how you dealt with them. Also include comparisons to published data, where relevant. Finally, give some scientific context: why is your target astronomically interesting, and why is this type of object worth studying? What can be learned from such investigations?
• Conclusions, in which you evaluate the project as a whole, including any changes you would make if you were starting over, what you would do differently along the way, and what the next steps might be if someone were to continue the project.
• Paragraph describing team member contributions to the project.
• References, including books, the course packet, web resources, etc.

For your class presentation, you may use PowerPoint or a PDF (not Presi, please!).