Month: June 2010

Hi, Jennifer Campbell here, Astrophysics major of the Haverford class of 2011.  This is my Summer’s-Halfway-Over Update post. First I’ll talk about the work I’ve been doing, then a little about Yale and my experience here. Sorry no pics right now, I never seem to remember my camera when I got out.

The Research:

This summer I’ve been doing research with Prof Marla Geha (a collaborator of Beth Willman) at Yale University. I have been working on an independent project, getting paid by a KINSC Summer Stipend.

Marla and her group members have been working with observations of Milky Way satellites. At the beginning of the summer, I started looking at the velocity profiles of Milky Way foreground stars in the lines of sight of these objects. I then compared them to the velocity distribution of modeled stars in corresponding lines of sight, created by an online galaxy simulator, the Besançon Model. After a few weeks, it became apparent that it was difficult to compare these populations effectively, after trying a few statistical tests, as well as after finding some qualitative curiosities. To perhaps enable a better comparison, I began breaking down the groups of stars, sorting the modeled population into disk vs halo and/or giant vs dwarf stars. But again, progress proved limited.

Most recently, I’ve jumped back almost to square one. Marla has given me the original complete data sets for two of the objects, and I have started the object member selection over from scratch to get a more precise cut. I’ve been having some success, but with some bumps in the road. Regardless, it looks like, with these improved selection parameters, I’ll be increasing the number of foreground stars I have to work with (right now I’ve got ~35% more, at least for these two objects), which could lead to improved kinematics analysis.

The Experience:

Yale has a pretty different environment from Haverford. I think I’m the only undergraduate student around in the Astronomy Department (if there are others, they must be kept hidden away somewhere).  Most of the people around are grad students and postdocs/researchers and some faculty. It’s been empty in my office a lot, summer is popular for trips and projects abroad. I have gotten to talk to a few grad students though, and I think it’s been helpful. They’ve been telling me a little about life after undergrad, and their experiences here. It’s been a good taste of what I might look for or forward to if I decided to continue to grad school for astronomy. It’s a step up in independence, that’s for sure- in responsibilities, and in research. I definitely still have some questions I’d like to ask, but I’ve made a good start.

Outside of the department, New Haven is alright. I feel a little intimidated, never having been a city person, so I steer clear of the busier streets sometimes. Walking through campus is beautiful, I love the old architecture in a lot of the parts of town and the university. I’m living in a nice neighborhood, with, luckily, a Subway and a Dunkin Donuts within a couple blocks. 😉 Unfortunately, New Haven lost its one and only major grocery store a few months ago, so it’s been a challenge, but I get up to one in Hamden (20 minutes north), to stock up when I can get a ride with my roommate.

I hope to spend a few weekends traveling a bit. Last weekend I went down to visit Haverford for a few days, but missed a lot of people, so I may go again. I’d also like to go to NYC while I’m so near,  or maybe get up to Boston for a weekend with some friends.

All in all, it’s been a good summer so far. Can’t believe it’s halfway through! I’ll try to write again towards the end of my time here. TTFN, ta-ta for now!
~Jen

Beth Willman, assistant professor, here.  I just wrapped up at a meeting held in Lyon, France from June 14 – 18 titled “A Universe of Dwarf Galaxies”.  Overall, the conference was very well organized, with plenty of time set aside for poster viewing and discussion.  The lunches were also ridiculously good (3 course, sit down lunches plus wine). There were over 150 participants at this meeting, so there were loads of excellent talks and posters.

This meeting included a broad range of presentations about many aspects of dwarf galaxy formation and evolution (as well as some star clusters thrown in for good measure).   There was even some discussion about “What is a galaxy?”, but it was contained to the session about Ultra Compact Dwarf galaxies (UCDs).  Even though these objects are called “dwarfs”, there isn’t uniform agreement about whether they are the high-mass end of globular star clusters or whether they are instead galaxies.  I think they are star clusters, but agree that it may not be 110% clear.

The observational result presented at this conference that stood out as the most new and exciting was a new result found by Sergey Koposov and collaborators, as presented by Matt Walker (one of Sergey’s collaborators).  Their team has been awarded a large amount of time on the VLT to obtain many repeat measurements of individual stars belonging to the very least luminous galaxies known in the universe.  This is important to investigate the effects of binary stars which could potentially have a huge effect on the observed dynamics of these tiny galaxies. Matt Walker showed the results of 21(!) epochs of imaging of stars in the Bootes I galaxies, and the velocity dispersion of 3 km/sec they computed from their dataset.  The dataset was to die for.  I look forward to seeing their upcoming paper, to read about the technique in more detail and to seeing the results they obtain from their other targets.

My own talk was about observational biases in our current census of the least luminous galaxies known in the universe and on imminent/future prospects for overcoming those biases. (I’m the world expert in the detectability of the teeniest galaxies in the universe, if I may say so myself.)

The ample time for discussion was my favorite part of the workshop, because it gave me a chance to speak with many of my current colleagues that I don’t typically get to see in person, including (in no particular order): Ricardo Munoz, Dave Sand, Evan Kirby, Erik Tollerud, Helmut Jerjen, and Gary Da Costa.  I have lots of ongoing projects to talk with all of those folks about; unfortunately time ran short for science chats because I arrived a bit late and I didn’t have much of a chance to talk with some other folks that I wanted to – like Nicolas Martin from MPIA.

I also got to spend quality time with some friends and older colleagues of mine, including (in no particular order): Julianne Dalcanton, Lucio Mayer, and Gurtina Besla.  Gurtina is a computational astrophysics graduate student at Harvard I got to know when I was there as a postdoc. It was great to have the chance to catch up with her.  We had dinner one night with Julianne Dalcanton, my dissertation advisor and then also on the last night of the conference. She is an expert in modelling the Magellanic Clouds.   Au revoir for now!

Hi!  I’m Megan Bedell and I’m a physics/astro major in the class of 2012.  I am spending the summer as an REU student at the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket- I’ve been here for nearly a month now and so far the experience has been fantastic!  There are seven astronomy interns in total living across the street from one of the two observatories.  We each have our own research project; I’m making photometric observations using interference filters to study an interesting type of variable star called uxors (named after UX Ori, the prototype).  Along with my research, I give tours of the historic observatory and work at public observing nights three times a week.  It’s a busy schedule but luckily interns are free to do our work whenever we want without set working hours, so we can always take time off during the day to go to the beach or walk around town!

Being on Nantucket is tough duty, but somebody’s got to do it…

Most recently, we took a five-day road trip to visit observatories on the east coast (including Haverford!).  It was a great trip and I had the chance to meet a lot of interesting people and get an inside view of some really impressive research institutions.  My boss, Vladimir, has connections to all of these institutions, so we were able to meet scientists (and friends of his) everywhere and hear about their research projects and experiences.  A few of my personal highlights were:
– seeing the scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope at the Hubble Institute
– eating sandwiches at a cafe down the street from the Harvard CfA and overhearing nerdy astronomy conversations all around us
– Hubble 3D movie at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, so cool!!!  bonus points for narration by Leonardo DiCaprio
– having the chance to meet and consult with a leading expert in my research area at Wesleyan
– watching construction on the MIT Haystack Observatory’s main radio telescope using the biggest crane in the state of Massachusetts!
– the Naval Observatory’s beautiful astronomy library
– a brief return to Haverford for a great talk by Bruce Partridge
– making the ferry home in time to catch the Celtics-Lakers game on the ferry’s television, which we watched alongside what felt like half of Cape Cod!  What, I couldn’t work the entire time.

In conclusion, my REU experience has been great so far!  It’s interesting to live the life of a full-time observational astronomer- I am definitely developing a whole new level of appreciation for online weather forecast services.  Interacting with the public at open nights is also a lot of fun.  I have quite a bit of work ahead of me, but I’m looking forward to getting some interesting results!