RAPID: Courseware Development for Computational Astrophysics

在过去的几年里，计算天体物理学已经从天体物理学的边缘活动转变为主流活动。 它仍然是一个相当年轻的领域，正在迅速流行，特别是在更熟悉计算机的年轻天文学家中。 使计算天体物理学成为年轻天文学家培训的主流课题将是非常有利的。 然而，计算天体物理学缺乏标准文本是实现这一目标的主要障碍。 Balsara博士正在编写这样一本教科书，松散地模仿非常成功的文本“数字食谱”，但进展相当缓慢。 这个奖项解除了巴尔萨拉博士的其他职责，并允许集中精力完成这本书。 它还支持一个研究生谁是生产高质量的解决方案，在文本中的问题，和一些旅行的演示，咨询，和协作。这本书将产生教的背景材料与大量的直观的论点和大量的例子代码。 它的前半部分基本上是一个学期的课程，而后半部分是一个研究专著。 由此产生的文本将是非常有价值的实践科学家，或加入，计算天体物理学领域的思想，以及在高水平的课程使用。 因此，希望这本书能吸引更多的人进入这一领域，并促进这一领域的新研究。这一奖项是根据“快速反应研究（RAPID）赠款”计划颁发的。

AST-0947765BalsaraThe last few years have seen computational astrophysics move from being a fringe activity in astrophysics to being a mainstream activity. It is still quite a young field that is catching on fast, especially among the younger astronomers who are more computer-aware. It would be very advantageous to make computational astrophysics a mainstream topic in the training of young astronomers. However, the absence of a standard text in computational astrophysics is a major impediment in achieving that goal. Dr. Balsara is part-way through writing such a text book, loosely patterned after the very successful text 'Numerical Recipes', but progress has been quite slow. This award relieves Dr. Balsara from other duties and permits a concentrated push to take the book to completion. It also supports a graduate student who is producing high-quality solutions to the problems in the text, and some travel for presentation, consultation, and collaboration.The book to be produced teaches the background material with a lot of intuitive arguments and ample pieces of example code. Its first half is essentially a one-semester course, while the second half is more of a research monograph. The resultant text will be of great value to practicing scientists in, or thinking of joining, the field of computational astrophysics, as well as of use in high level courses. It is, therefore, hoped that the text will draw more people into the field, as well as catalyze new research in this field.This award is made under the "Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID)" program.