Saxon Stockton
Astrophysics PhD Student · Texas Christian University
I pull physics out of starlight. My research maps the glowing gas in and around 30 Doradus, the most active star-forming region in the Local Group, to see what a starburst does to its own galaxy. The rest of this site is my attempt to explain work like that to anyone willing to read it.
Three ways in
Pick whichever one you came for
Almost everything on this site lives in one of three places. If you are in one of my lab sections, go straight to Lab Help. If you are here from any other class, you want the middle one.
Research
Emission-line maps of 30 Doradus from SDSS-V LVM spectroscopy, and documentation for the code that produces them.
Current focusTeaching Resources
Lab help for my physics sections, Python tutorials you can run in the browser, mathematics lessons, and worked physics problems. Free, no account, no paywall.
Start learningCurriculum Vitae
Education, research experience, teaching history, and talks — on the page or as a PDF download.
Read the CVRight now
What I am working on
Emission-line maps of 30 Doradus
Turning tens of thousands of LVM spectra of the Tarantula Nebula into maps of hydrogen emission, dust, star formation, and ionization, from the nebula out into its outflow.
Summary on the CV WritingPython from Scratch
A tutorial series that starts before the code — what a programming language actually is, and what a computer is actually doing — then teaches Python in cells you run right in the page.
Open the seriesNew here?
Good places to start
What is a programming language?
No code. Just the idea that a language is a very literal translator, and why that explains almost every error message you will ever see.
Read itHow computers actually work
Bits, entropy, logic gates, and why information is a physical quantity you can measure — starting from a flashlight and a dog.
Read itHow I think about teaching
Why I believe most learning problems are translation problems, and what that means for how these lessons are written.
Read it