Below is a description of some of the basic background information and tools needed to begin research in astronomy. The early parts of the outline apply to any area of research, while the later parts grow more specific, moving to observational work at optical and infrared wavelengths.

Computers

Computers are used in all aspects of astronomy research, and the most common operating system for this work is some variation of Unix, on a Sun, a PC with Linux, or a Mac. Powerpoint is the only Windows program that is commonly used, and this is also available on Macs. So one of the first steps in preparing for research is to learn the basics of the Unix operating system. There are many Unix tutorials on the web and in bookstores. Examples are here and here.

Basic Unix commands you should learn include:
ls cd pwd cp rm rmdir mv passwd

Other important programs likely to be available on your system include:
gv = views postscript (.ps) files
xpdf or acroread = views pdf files
sm = plotting program for making figures (saved as postscript files)
gimp = image manipulator
xephem = provides a star chart of the sky for a given location, date, and time
latex = processes a latex document file (.tex); most professional astronomy documents and publications are prepared in latex
vi and emacs = two of the basic programs for editing text files. you should learn how to use one of these

Basic information for your computer account in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics is provided here.

The analysis of astronomical data is commonly referred to as "data reduction". Data is analyzed (or "reduced") using software on a desktop computer. The most commonly used software package for optical and infrared data is the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF). Learning the basics of IRAF is important if you expect to work with optical or infrared data. The IRAF homepage provides a tutorial, and many others are available on the web. IRAF can be downloaded and installed for free. Another commonly used set of software is IDL, for which a license must be purchased (usually a department-wide license is available).

During day-to-day research, you will frequently need to manipulate data from text files and perform various mathematical tasks. Learning some kind of programming or scripting language is necessary to do this. For computationally intensive tasks, fortran or C are options, but otherwise I use perl whenever possible, which is much more user friendly and versatile. Like Unix and IRAF, perl (or some equivalent scripting language) is very important to learn.

If you are responsible for installing the software on your computer, then this task is much easier with Fink.

Detailed advice specific to an astronomer using a Mac is available here and here.

Professional Literature

The final product of a research project should be a paper published in a peer-reviewed (or "refereed") journal. With a peer-reviewed/refereed journal, a paper submitted to the journal is sent to another scientist in the field who reviews the paper and provides the journal with suggestions for improvements, which the journal passes along to the author (usually without disclosing the identity of the reviewer/referee). After the paper is revised by the author, the referee examines it once more and provides the journal with a recommendation of whether the paper should be accepted for publication in the journal. In comparison, papers published in conference proceedings are usually not refereed, and thus have little value on one's record of publications.

Here is a list of the primary professional astronomy journals. ApJ is the most prestigious of these journals and its articles generally have the highest quality and impact. A scientist from any country can publish an article in any of these journals, but the papers in a journal tend to be authored predominantly by scientists from the country in which the journal resides, such as the US for ApJ and AJ, UK for MNRAS, and Europe for A&A.

The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ)
The Astronomical Journal (AJ)
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)
Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP)

Using the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), you can search the astronomical literature for articles according to various criteria, including author name, title, subject, year, and refereed/non-refereed. For instance, if you want to see a list of the papers written by an astronmer, enter "Smith, J." in the author field. When the list of papers appears, you can then download the papers. For newer articles, your computer will need a license for the journal in question, which is usually available transparently if using a computer at an astronomy department. Older papers usually don't require a license and are free.

Finally, an important resource for publications is the archive of astronomy preprints, known as astro-ph. The time between when a paper is accepted for publication by a journal and when it appears in a printed issue of the journal is usually several months. To more quickly communicate their results to other scientists, most astronomers post a copy of their paper on astro-ph as soon as it is accepted for publication by the journal. (Some astronomers post the submitted versions of their papers before they have been accepted for publication, but I don't recommend this.) A new list of posted papers appears at astro-ph every weekday morning. It's good to develop a habit of checking astro-ph on a regular basis to keep up to date on the most recent work in your field.

Databases

Here are the primary astronomical databases that are available on the web:

Simbad is used to look up previous observations and papers on a given astronomical source or to search for astronomical objects that satisfy various criteria (e.g., spectral type, magnitude, position).

NED is similar to Simbad, except specialized for extragalactic sources.

The Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) contains electronic scans of photographic plates of the entire sky that were taken decades ago. The image quality isn't good by the standards of modern telescopes, but it does cover the whole sky and is often useful for planning observations (e.g., making finding charts) and for the measuring proper motions or variability relative to newer images.

The Sloan Digitized Sky Survey (SDSS) is an optical imaging survey of 1/4 of the sky (modern version of DSS).

The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) imaged the entire sky at infrared wavelenths of J (1.2um), H (1.6um), and Ks (2.2um). Here are the links for accessing the catalog and the image archive.

The Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky (DENIS). Similar to 2MASS, except in the I, J, and H bands instead of J, H, and K and only for the southern hemisphere.

Most space observatories (Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra) and newer and larger ground-based observatories (ESO/VLT, others) that are supported by public funding maintain archives of their data, or have plans to do so. The scientist for whom the data were obtained usually has a proprietary period of 1-2 years; after that, anyone can download and use the data.

The Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) provides an interface for accessing archives for many infrared and submillimeter missions, such as IRAS, ISO, 2MASS, SWAS, SDSS, MSX, and Spitzer.

And other more specialized ones:

Atlas and Catalog of Dark Clouds. This site provides extinction maps of large areas of the galactic plane, which are useful for getting the global view of a molecular cloud or star forming region.

Catalogs of extrasolar planets are here and here.

Professional Organizations, Meetings, and Jobs

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) is the primary professional organization of American astronomers.

The AAS hosts 2 conferences each year, which are usually the largest astronomy meetings in the country. A comprehensive list of all meetings in astronomy that are planned in the next few years is found here. It's good to check this once in a while to see if there are meetings planned for the next year that you would like to attend.

Most jobs in astronomer are advertised at the AAS Job Register, which is updated monthly. Rumors concerning astronomy jobs are posted intermittently at the Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill.

Ground-based Telescopes

Because of various factors (favorable weather patterns, accessible, stability of the atmosphere and local government), Chile and Hawaii are the best currently-utilized locations for optical and infrared ground-based telescopes. Telescopes are also found in Arizona, California, Texas, New Mexico, the Canary Islands (Spain), South Africa, mainland Europe, and various other countries.

Hawaii

Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii hosts the greatest collection of telescopes in the world. The atmosphere above Mauna Kea typically is very stable and allows for sharp images, or excellent "seeing". Water in the atmosphere absorbs light at many wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g., mid-IR, or 10um), normally preventing observations of stars at those wavelengths. However, those observations are often possible from Mauna Kea because the atmosphere above it is very dry and thus suffers from less water absorption. These telescopes are operated by various consortia of governments and institutions. As part of the agreement with the state of Hawaii for allowing construction of these telescopes, the University of Hawaii is given a share of the time on all of them. Chile has a similar arrangement for all telescopes built within its borders.

2.2m University of Hawaii (UH)

3.0m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) is available for use by any professional astronomer. Half of the time is allotted for solar system research and the other half for the rest of astronomy. This telescope has a wonderful near-IR spectrometer (0.8-5um) called SpeX and offers remote observing from your home institution.

3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)

3.8m United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)

8m Gemini North (National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, University of Hawaii) Most of its observations are performed by observatory staff (queue observing) rather than the astronomers themselves (classical observing).

8.2m Subaru Telescope (Japan)

2x10m Keck Observatory (Caltech, the University of California, NASA)

Mauna Kea also hosts three submillimeter observatories:
10.4m Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO)

15m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) (UK, Canada, and Netherlands)

8x6m Submillimeter Array (SMA) (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Taiwan)

Chile

Major observatories are located on several mountains in Chile.

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is operated by NOAO, so any US astronomer can apply to use these telescopes:

4m Blanco Telescope was one of the premiere telescopes in the world at one time but now is somewhat old with image quality that is lower than newer, state-of-the-art telescopes.

4.1m SOAR Telescope (on nearby Cerro Pachon) (NOAO, Brazil, the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University) SOAR was recently constructed and offers excellent image quality.

several smaller telescopes run by SMARTS consortium

8m Gemini South is on Cerro Pachon next to SOAR.

Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) is operated by the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (OCIW). Because the altitude of Las Campanas is not particularly high, the site isn't as good as Hawaii or Paranal for mid-IR observations.

2x6.5m Magellan Telescopes (Carnegie, Harvard, Michigan Arizona, MIT) No ground-based telescope outside of Antarctica has better seeing than Magellan.

2.5m DuPont Telescope

1m Swope Telescope

La Silla is part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

3.6m

3.5m New Technology Telescope (NTT)

several smaller telescopes

Paranal is the site of the four 8m telescopes that comprise ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Arizona

Kitt Peak
4m Mayall is operated by Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), which is part of NOAO and is the northern counterpart of CTIO.

3.5m Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO Telescope (WIYN)

2.1m KPNO

2.3m Bok Telescope (University of Arizona).

several other 1-2m telescopes

Mt Hopkins is the site of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)

6.5m MMT (SAO and Arizona)

1-2m telescopes, an optical/IR interferometer, and gamma ray telescope

Mt Graham International Observatory (MGIO)
2x8.4m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) (Arizona and several other institutions)

10m Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope (SMT)

1.8m Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT)

California

Palomar Observatory (Caltech)
5m Hale

other smaller telescopes

Lick Observatory (University of California)
3m Shane

other smaller telescopes

Texas and New Mexico

McDonald Observatory (University of Texas)
9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) (Texas, Penn State, Stanford, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Georg August Universitat)

2.7m Harlan Smith Telescope

other 1-2m telescopes

Apache Point Observatory (APO)
3.5m Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) (NMSU, Washington, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Chicago, Colorado)

2.5m Sloan Digital Sky Survey Telescope

other smaller telescopes

Australia
Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO)

3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT)

1.2 UK Schmidt

Spain
10.4m Gran Telelscopio Canarias (GTC) (Spain, Mexico, Florida)

4.2m William Herschel (UK, Netherlands, Spain)

2.5m Isaac Newton (UK, Netherlands, Spain)

1.2, 2.2, 3.5m Calar Alto Observatory (MPIA, Spain)

South Africa
11m Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) (South Africa and several other institutions) based on the design of HET

Space Telescopes

Here are the main space observatories in current operation:
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

Spitzer Space Telescope

Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO)

Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer