Hello! My name is Matthew, and I will be working closely with Nate and Travis over the coming months to get to know BOINC. I'll eventually be aquiring some of their duties as well.

I'll be running a few short test runs of older code just to get used to the system, so don't worry if something looks a bit off.

Welcome. Don't get scared off by all of the complaints. :p

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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.

Welcome to the project :) Could you tell us a little about yourself? (such as, what is your specialty?)

Thanks!

A bit about myself:
I am an Astrophysics graduate student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I've been working with the group that does Milkyway@home, but on other (non-BOINC) projects. Now I'm joining the BOINC team, and I'll be learning the ropes over the next few months.
So, my specialty right now is Astrophysics, but I'll be becoming more of a galactic astronomer as I go. I enjoy all of the sciences, though, and wish that I had the time to learn more about them!

Hello,
I'm also working with boinc over the summer-- I'm an undergraduate at RPI. I've actually been working with this program (the maximum likelihood calculator) since last summer. What I do is rearrange the star points we look at into a new spherical coordinate system with the object of interest (the Sagittarius Dwarf Stream) positioned on the equator.

The reason behind this transformation has to do with the way the code analyzes the data: basically it takes 2.5 degree wide strips of data out of the sky and from there determines where the most dense areas of the sky are. Right now these strips of data are ordered in the manner in which the SDSS recorded them-- more based on the lgoistics of telescope running than data analysis. Thus when we look at these strips of data we see structures jumbled in at awkward orientations, sometimes perpendicular to the stripe, sometimes parallel. If we reorient these strips with respect to Sagittarius (from my coordinate transform) , so that the stream passes through them perpendicularly rather than at some oblique angle, we believe that the program will calculate more accurate information about the stream.

Welcome to "our" project Mathew & John!!!
Hope your experience here is a positive one, I see no reason why it shouldn't be. The gang here is made up of all kinds of people, most are friendly & try to help out if they can. So if you need something we might be able to help with, dont hesitate to ask,ok.
;-p Bruce

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welcome to the milkyway, it's a small but relatively peaceful community. we have a few nova's per year(pesky users) and they tend to be the wild bunch but just do like the rest of us, ignore them.