Month: July 2011

Hello, my name is Emily Cunningham and I am another rising senior participating in summer research. This summer, I am working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, with Dr. Francesca Civano on pairs of X-ray sources in the Chandra COSMOS survey.

The COSMOS field is a region of the sky that has been surveyed in over thirty different wavelengths, resulting in a wealth of data on the sources in the field. The X-ray sources I am studying are active galaxies. While active black holes are often obscured by dust or light from the galaxy, there is the least amount of obscuration in the X-ray. As such, detection in the X-ray is the best way to unambiguously identify an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Therefore, we can use the data from the Chandra COSMOS survey to identify pairs of AGN and the data from other COSMOS surveys to study their properties in detail.

While I am very much enjoying the science, my summer here has been so much more than simply a research experience. First of all, the program itself has many components to help us prepare for our future careers in astronomy: the SAO REU aims to give its students a window into what life as both a graduate student and an astronomer is like. We have had lunch discussions on how to apply for NSF fellowships, what the application process is like for graduate school (from both current Harvard graduate students and Harvard faculty on the admissions committee), and about research ethics.

In addition, we have multiple opportunities to interact with many of the amazing astronomers that work at the CfA. Every Thursday afternoon the interns host a colloquium: we have seven speakers throughout the summer, each engaging in a different kind of research in astronomy. Each week two interns host the colloquium, and are responsible for meeting the speaker ahead of time, arranging for the food and beverages, and introducing the speaker. It has been wonderful to meet members of the CfA community, learn about some of the different fields within astronomy, and to have a brief opportunity to practice speaking in front of large crowds.

The writing experience has also been very valuable. Over the course of the summer, each SAO intern produces a paper on their research project, and gives a 15 minute talk on the research at the end of the summer. We produce three drafts of our papers: the first three weeks in (Intro and Methods), the second, a full draft, seven weeks in (due next week!), and the final draft due at the end of nine weeks. It has been wonderful to be able to develop my scientific writing skills and to have conversations with multiple experienced astronomers on both my writing and my project.

Above all, however, I am grateful for my relationships with the other students in the program, both the Astronomy REU and the Solar Physics REU (including the delightful Andrew Sturner). One of my favorite parts about studying astronomy at Haverford is our tight community of students: we work together and learn so much from one another. I’m thrilled that I have found another such community here. Even though we are working in many different fields and in many different programming languages, we still rely on each other for proofreading papers, debugging code, or talking through concepts. In addition, we all live together in Harvard graduate student housing, so we often cook together and explore the area together. Our adventures have included the Boston Aquarium, the Fine Arts Museum, Provincetown, Wonderland Beach, and Chinatown, and we will be going to stay at my house in New York City next weekend! I am so happy to have the fellow interns, both as friends and as colleagues, and will no doubt maintain these relationships for a long time.

Hi everyone!  My name is Miriam Fuchs, and I’m a junior Astrophysics major at Haverford.  This summer I’m working with Professor Andrew West (HC ’99) in the Astronomy department at Boston University.  So far it has been a blast!

My research focuses on white dwarf and M dwarf binary pairs.  Using spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we are able to look at multiple spectra of each binary that have been taken over a short period of time.  Over the course of a couple of hours, each binary will typically have 3-8 exposures taken.  Because these binaries are so close together and moving so quickly, their spectra will have visibly shifted from one exposure to the next.  Because of this, we can use Doppler shifting to calculate the radial velocities of the white dwarfs and M dwarfs and learn more about their general kinematics.

Working at BU has been an exciting experience.  Having multiple floors of astronomers, and lots of grad students to consult has definitely highlighted some of the differences between working at a large research university and a liberal arts college.  It’s also been great working with a Haverford alum – while I’m no longer in the basement of the INSC, it still feels like a Haverford lab; there’s a lot of collaboration between professors and students, everyone helps out one another, and there’s a general sense of being part of a community within our group.  More than anything else, my research experience this summer has taught me how much I enjoy conducting research.

Being in Boston also has its perks! There’s delicious food all around, great museums, and lots of things to do. Later in the month, our lab is taking a group field trip to Fenway to watch a Red Sox game – I’m really excited!

All in all, it’s been a fantastic summer so far.  It’s been great reading everyone’s updates on the Astronoblog.  Hope everyone else is having a wonderful summer!

 

Hi! I’m Jacob Gilbert, another one of the rising seniors in the department, majoring in Astrophysics. I’m working through the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium at Swarthmore College with Professor Eric Jensen, studying the youngest exoplanets in the galaxy. We are working under the auspices of the Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI) to try to learn about planetary formation models. YETI uses over 20 different telescopes around the world to try to continuously monitor stars with orbiting exoplanets.

Here at Swarthmore we have been observing several stars; some have known exoplanets, whereas others are candidate stars that we are looking into further. When we observe these systems, we cannot directly view the planets. What we look for instead is how the brightness of a star changes with time. When a planet passes in front of a star, it transits the star, which appears dimmer to us. When the star passes to the side, it reflects light back at us in a subtle effect known as occultation. We are only looking at the transits, as our telescope is not sufficiently precise enough to measure the small increase in brightness caused by an occultation.

Most of the work I have been doing during the daytime has focused on writing code (unsurprisingly) to reduce the images taken at the Peter van de Kamp observatory here at Swarthmore. Since the code was written in IDL, I’ve mostly been fine-tuning my IDL coding skills, especially with regards to graphical interface. What started out as a simple image reduction code now reduces the data, performs aperture photometry and outputs a light curve. We’ve also been working with some new software called TAP (Transit Analysis Package) to fit planetary models to our transit data.

At night, however, I get to observe in Swarthmore’s wonderful new telescope. It is a 0.9m telescope with a 4K x 4K CCD. We installed a new filter wheel, and are in the process of making the system more automated by installing a weather detector that will shut down the dome in case of inclement weather. It has been very exciting to use the reduction code to produce light curves almost immediately after we have finished taking data, and to be able to see proof of planets around other stars!

I’ve been really enjoying living at Haverford- my first summer here- but working nearby. Philadelphia has been a really fun place to hang out: concerts, record hunting, food, and exploring in general. I also have to do research until after Haverford allows students to live on campus, so I’ll probably be living in Philly for a few weeks in August. A little annoying, but it should still be fun. This is my first summer research, and it has given me a great perspective on a possible future path for me. I’m still very unsure about what I want to do, but this has so far been a rewarding and exciting experience.