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Hello, I am Tonima Tasnim Ananna – a Physics and Astronomy major at Bryn Mawr and Haverford respectively and a rising junior. I have so far spent two very exciting weeks at Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at Baltimore as an intern this summer. I have been to five astronomy talks in the last two weeks – two of them specifically targeted at the summer interns, and I will talk about them and other ‘perks’ of being a summer intern at STScI in a moment, but first I want to talk about the project I am working on, because it’s exciting and because we can all relate to science.

I am working with astronomer Massimo Robberto and his team of one PhD student and one Post-doc. My project is to sort out 6 catalogues full of information about stars in the Orion Nebula cluster. There are over 6000 stars observed in total, and the observations were made using five cameras – three onboard the Hubble Space Telescope – Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), Wide-Field/Planetary Camera 2(WFPC2) and Near Infrared Camera and Multi Objects Spectrograph (NICMOS) – and two ground based telescopes – the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at the ESO/MPI 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory and Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) at the CTIO/Blanco 4 m telescope in Cerro Tololo. These observations were made because it would enable us to produce a master catalogue of all the stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster. This catalogue will help answer some fundamental questions about star formation (as the ONC is a active star formation region), such as the calibration of pre-main sequence evolutionary tracks, variation of initial mass function in different environments and evolution of mass accretion rates. By talking to Carlo (the very patient PhD student who probably answers 100-200 questions a day for me) and Nicola (the post-doc), I have come to learn a lot about pre-main sequence stars, a population I have spared less thought about (until now) than the main-sequence stars, post-main sequence stars and protostars. I would like to jump into the Physics of this, but the catalogues need to be done before we can get to that.

As I have mentioned above, there are 6 catalogues – one catalogue for each camera, and one master catalogue. The cameras onboard HST have small chips so the complete cluster is a mosaic of many images taken by the cameras – and sometimes, each camera picks up the same star several times, and so one star ends up having several entries in one catalogue. Since work on these catalogues have been going on for several years (since 2006…), many of these stars have already been recognized as the same source by matching their relative RA and DEC and spectral energy distribution, but the work is not complete. Also, after recognizing these cases, they have to cross-referenced to the detections by the other cameras. The master catalogue holds all the cross-referencing details.

I am grateful for the work my predecessors (3 or 4 summer students) did before me on identifying and cross-referencing the sources, but it came at a small price – to make the final output (the atlas), people kept adding to this one master code that has now become a 2000 line monster code that badly needs simplification (which is a good training for me) and debugging. Lot and lot of debugging. I didn’t have much experience working with databases in IDL before, but I have become quite used to them in the last two weeks (again, thanks to Carlo for his patience). One thing that is really coming in handy from Observational Astronomy is the project we did with data structures. Nobody seems to have any experience with them and some are quite scared of them, so I have been a little on my own while working with them. Looking at my old observational codes have been very helpful. Some things I have tried are – opening a database once and putting all the data in a data structure instead of opening the databases every time a variable is needed. This saves a lot of time, especially for such a long code. I have also learned a few new tricks, like cutting a .fits file and reading in just a small portion of it instead of the whole image using readfits, rotating images by reading in the orientation of a camera from the header etc.

I would like to talk about the talks I have been to (about Hubble Legacy archive, hot stuff in cool stars ;), galaxy mergers – cool tidal tails and a 30 year old simulation by the Toomre brothers etc) but I am making this entry too long, I hope to post again soon and talk about my experience here. Take care everyone and clear skies (my Bulgarian roommate told me that’s the traditional Bulgarian greeting between astronomers)!

My name is Andrew Sturner and I am now a senior astronomy-physics major.  I have the privilege of beginning the Astronoblog’s 2011 Summer Research Updates series, where each member of Haverford’s Astronomy Department doing astronomical research will blog about his or her summer project and experiences.  This year, every upper-level student in the department who wanted to work in astronomy found an off-campus position, funded through NSF-sponsored programs (including the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium), the Haverford College Center of Peace and Global Citizenship, and the Haverford College KINSC Summer Stipend program.  The incredibly high percentage of our department doing research this summer is truly a testament to the strength of our academic program and cause for celebration.

This summer, I am working with the Solar and Stellar X-Ray Group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA with Dr. Kelly Korreck.   The goal of my project is to characterize the temperature of active regions on the solar limb before, during, and after a flare event.  In less dense language, this means that I am studying how the atmosphere of the Sun heats up and cools down around the time that a solar flare occurs.  A solar flare is an extremely complicated (and not truly well-understood) process that occurs when the magnetic fields of the Sun, which store vast amounts of energy, suddenly realign in such a way that the field cannot hold as much energy as before.  The “extra” energy is transferred to the plasma, or ionized gas, that is in the Sun’s atmosphere, causing it to heat up.  The sudden heating creates an explosion, and millions of tons of hot plasma are thrown off into space.  Solar flares are truly beautiful events, and the high-resolution satellite images that I work with every day never fail to be wonderful and awesome, in the literal sense.

Even though I tend to work past quitting time and sneak in extra hours on the weekends, the past two and a half weeks have not been only staring at a computer screen.  I have been effectively absorbed by the Smithsonian’s Solar REU program, with 6 other undergraduate students from across the country (plus one from Scotland!).  We, together with the Smithsonian’s other REU program which invites students to study non-solar branches of astronomy (from quasars to dust storms on Mars), attend colloquia on various astronomical topics, tutorials on various programming languages and research tools (such as the ADS and DS9 (both are CfA projects!)), lectures on applying to graduate schools, etc.   We also have had a number of fun adventures to visit the Boston aquarium and the fine art museum, to eat brunch at a traditional dim sum restaurant in Chinatown, and to observe on the University’s telescopes, among others events.  I even got to attend the Bruins parade last Saturday following their victory in the Stanley Cup Final.  And nurturing my other life as a track athlete, I have met up with several different local running clubs and explored the city quite extensively on foot.

Several days after I started at the CfA, I had an epiphany: I have finally found “it”.  The people, the work, the sense of excitement- this is the type of place where I see myself spending the next 40+ years.  It is a difficult feeling to characterize, and I’m not sure how to describe it to someone who has never had this experience, except that it is simultaneously calming and exhilarating.  Last summer, I was interested by my physics research project, but this summer is a whole new ballpark in terms of the passion I feel for what I am doing.  And the solar astronomy family has a very strong and developed sense of teamwork, collaboration, and respect for each other, and their enthusiasm for the their work is highly infectious.  I am beyond grateful to the Haverford College KINSC Steering Committee for giving me this life-altering opportunity.

If you want to learn more about my research project or about the sun in general, please visit my research blog at http://approachingeddington.blogspot.com.  Thanks, and I hope everyone is enjoying the Sun this summer as much as I am!

Hello!  I’m Megan Bedell, a Physics/Astronomy double major in the class of 2012.  Last week I was lucky enough to attend the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which was held in Seattle, WA this winter.  The meeting consisted of literally thousands of astronomers from all over America (and a few from the rest of the world!) gathering to share their current research findings in the form of posters and short talks.  Over the past summer I participated in an REU at the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket, so I had my own research from the summer to present in poster form at the AAS meeting along with my fellow summer interns.  I spent 4 days at the conference attending talks and trying to absorb as much awesome astronomy knowledge as I could.  The conference was a bit overwhelming at first- as soon as I registered, I received a humongous book packed with lists of all the talks and posters that I could see, if I only had time to go to it all!  (Just as importantly, I also received my allotted number of tickets for free drinks at the coffee/tea station, which I was instructed to guard with my life.  Astronomers do not kid about their caffeine.)  Unfortunately I soon found it physically impossible to attend every single thing that interested me, but I did get to see some great talks on a wide range of topics, from exoplanets to cosmology.

A few highlights of my trip:

• my happy REUnion with my fellow summer interns (get it?? okay, sorry).  I also got to catch up with Maya Barlev ’12, whom I hadn’t seen in ages due to us both studying abroad!
• a hilarious talk by Michael Turner and Rocky Kolb (who has spoken at Haverford!) on the current state of cosmology, featuring many, many string theorist jokes.
• hearing about early results from the Planck satellite mission, which had been kept confidential until January 11.
• getting my mind blown by some posters about blind astronomers, who have star maps in Braille!
• the session of talks on the LSST, including a great one by Prof Beth Willman- I loved hearing the speakers get super excited about the revolutionary possibilities of the LSST’s new technology.
• the session on the Kepler mission was also very cool.
• going inside the awesome inflatable planetarium in the exhibit hall- Haverford, can we please set one of these up in Zubrow???
• of course, getting to present my own poster!  It was great to get feedback from interested astronomers, and I had some really good conversations with people who stopped by.  I also just found out that my friend and coauthor Alexa’s poster, which I was secondary author on, received the Chambliss award for undergraduate research, which is really exciting!
• last but definitely not least: scoring a free holographic bookmark of the SOFIA airborne observatory!!  I will treasure it always.

All in all, I had a wonderful time at the AAS meeting, and it opened my eyes to the huge amount of interesting research going on in the astronomical community today.  Thanks so much to Haverford’s Louis Green Fund for funding my travels, and to Beth Willman and the MMO for helping me a ton in working out the logistics and making it happen!

Wow, Tonima said pretty much everything about our part of the trip! I guess that leaves me to show you how it went.

Picture # / Description:

1) Scott and Tonima, well rested and ready to head up the mountain!

2) Welcome to Kitt Peak!

3) Can you guess why it might be a problem to drive on a curvy mountain road without headlights (so as to not disturb image taking)?

4) Land of Domes! Taken from our ridge, looking onto the next ridge.

5) The WIYN 0.9m Telescope! Notice the louvers to help control the conditions inside the dome.

6) The McMath Solar Observatory. What you see is in fact only 40% of the telescope, the rest is underground!

7) They’re not kidding. The group who was observing the night we arrived, John and Scott from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN showed us a video of them attempting to drown a scorpion back down the drain.  Needless to say, we kept those drain covers particularly tight and checked our shoes before putting them on each morning.

8) Looking out towards the Mexico border, only 60 miles away.

9) The telescope. Big enough that Tonima needed a bit of help to get the mirror cover off, even standing on the ladder.

10) The Steward Observatory, operated by Arizona University. The most recognizable object on the mountain.

11) The VLBA radio telescope on Kitt Peak.  This telescope works in parallel with 9 other arrays across the country, from Hawaii to Connecticut to the Virgin Islands, forming an effective array size of 5000 miles!

12) More friends that lived at the house.

13) The sun arises after a long night of observing, as we drive back to Tucson.

Hello, I am Tonima Tasnim Ananna, a sophomore from Bryn Mawr College, a declared Physics major (at Bryn Mawr), undeclared Astronomy major (at Haverford), and one of the members of the recent ASTR341 Observational Astronomy group which went to Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) at Arizona to find some RR Lyrae stars in faint satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. I’m so appreciative that the Louis Green Fund was available to support this trip to an observatory.

The satellites that we observed are galaxies Segue 2 and Segue 3, and Ursa Major 2 as control. The telescope that we used at KPNO is a 36’’ telescope called WIYN 0.9m.

Before we start, I will give a little bit of background on RR Lyrae star. These starts are special because they are a type of Pulsating Variable star – a kind of stars which periodically change their radius and luminosity, and reside in the “instability strip” of a HR-Diagram. The pulsating variables have a shell with temperature around 40,000K – a temperature at which Helium is ionize from He⁺ to He⁺⁺ – very close to its surface. This releases a lot of electrons into the shell, and as electrons scatter photons, this shell is very opaque to photons. The photons which random walk out of the hot core of the star cannot pass through this shell, and hence create a lot of pressure on the shell’s inner surface, forcing it to expand. As the hot gas expands, its temperature drops, and much like the surface of last scattering of the early Universe, the helium neutralizes and the shell’s opacity drops, and the photon flies free, suddenly increasing the luminosity of the star. But there is more to these stars than the cool Physics, these stars play a very useful part in gauging astronomical distances: their luminosity and period are related, so if we can find the period of such a star, we can find its absolute magnitude, and using the distance modulus, we can thus find its distance from us. This makes them excellent standard candles, and gives us the motivation to try to find them in faint galaxies like Segue 2 and 3, which have not yet been studied extensively for RR Lyrae.

To prepare for the observing run, at first we studied a handful of faint satellites of the Milky Way, prepared their hourly airmass table for the approximate time of our observation, and it turned out that the Segues make excellent objects for observation, with airmass smaller than 2 most of the time throughout the period of our observation. We approximated the expected background count based on lunar age at the time of our observation (around 7 days), and calculated exposure time that would give us a satisfactory signal to noise (100). The plan was to take images of the galaxies over a few hours (the RR Lyrae have periods of around half a day), and study the images for any changes in luminosity of stars over the period of observation. We used three different filters (B, V and I) to take the images.

The class split into three teams, and our team consisted of Assistant Professor Scott Engle, Andrew Sturner, and me. We were the earliest team there, and we observed the night of October 13^th, 2010. We arrived at Tucson on the night of 10^th, stayed at a Hyatt place for the night, went shopping for groceries the next day, had lunch at a restaurant called “Brushfire” which had excellent food and pictures of hell on its wall (to symbolize their food is spicy perhaps). Then we headed towards KPNO to observe. Tucson is surrounded by mountains, which was a treat for me because my native land, Bangladesh, is extremely two-dimensional. KPNO itself is on top of a mountain, elevated 7000ft above sea level, which, we found out, affords it exceptionally dark skies, far from city lights. We were inaugurated to our telescope’s system by another team working there on the night of the 12^th. During the training, we had time to wander outside at the sight, and take in the amazing night sky above the mountain. The disk of the Milky Way was visible as a dense, thick disk of stars across the sky. Once Orion nebula rose, we saw the super-red Betelgeuse and whiter Rigel. Andrew and I even spotted a shooting meteor, which Scott missed because at that instant he was unfortunately looking through a pair of binoculars.

Prior to the KPNO trip, most of our experience with telescopes was limited to the 12 and 16’’ Cassegrain telescopes at Haverford. This semester, we also started using CCD cameras to take pictures of our objects of interest. The telescope which we used at KPNO was 36’’, and with all due respect to our beloved 16’’ telescope, the WIYN 0.9m had a much more sophisticated system, complete with a liquid Nitrogen Dewar to keep the pixels of the CCD camera (called S2KB) cool to avoid thermal electron emission, and a system to take “dome flats”, or images of a flat field to correct our object images for biases in the camera’s pixels’ outputs. Another notable difference between the WIYN telescope and the 16’’ was the use of the Guide cameras – the WIYN telescope uses two special guide cameras to keep track of a star, and constantly outputs the degree to which the star’s image deviates from its centre, to verify that the telescope is keeping track of the our object of interest. But the best part of all has to be how little time we actually spent in the dome: we only needed to go to the dome to take a peek to verify everything looks as it should, and to fill the liquid Nitrogen Dewar. This was very comforting for me because last year when we were working for hours in the dome with the 12’’ telescope, no matter how much clothes I wore I always seemed to under dress by two jackets, and am sure was losing enough heat to be luminous myself. (But it was still fun when we got to look at the craters of the moon, and blue-green Neptune and Uranus).

On the 12^th, we woke up late because we have to stay awake throughout the coming night, had some food and went to meet Hillary, the sight supervisor, who gave us a second overview of the system. We filled the Dewar with liquid Nitrogen, and left to drive around the observatory. We were back a couple of hours later (around 4:30 pm) to take dome flats. We opened up the dome vents, turned on the exhaust fans and the dome flat lights (low intensity for our filters). We took 5 dome flats in each filter, 10 bias images (bias accounts for spontaneous reading by the camera for 0 second exposures), and by the time we were done with these, the sun has set, and it was time to start the Guider cameras to track a star. We looked through both guide cameras, and found an auspicious looking star (sorry about the bad pun) in the north camera. We started tracking it using a computer called MOSS, and entered the RA and DEC of Segue 3 in another computer called Olive. We moved the telescope to Segue 3, and using the focusing system of the computer Emerald, we analyzed a series of seven exposures of the galaxy for different focus values, and decided on the best focus value (in units particular to the system) for our images. The focus value changes with temperature, so we kept monitoring the temperature of the dome to see if we needed to make any adjustments. Luckily for us, temperature remained stable inside the dome and we only focused once per object. We started taking exposures (around 7 pm), and Professor Willman and her teams arrived. They were studying our activity the way we studied the other team the night before. We refilled the Dewar in the middle of observing Segue 3, because it needs refilling every 8 hours, and to show the other team how to do so. Then they left to rest, and we continued taking exposures of Segue 3, and completed 13 sets by midnight. Then we worked on a synoptic project which requested us to take pictures of M31 – Andromeda – in R band. We spent around one and a half hour taking flats, biases and images for this program, emailed them a notification, and moved to Segue 2. We refocused, took images of Segue 2 for a few hours – this time only in B and V band. We only managed to take 9 sets for Segue 2, and then had to move to Ursa Major 2. We took around 5 images of UM2 in V band, and then it was time for us to leave to catch an early flight back to Philly. We refilled the Dewar, and left pretty energized, even though we were up all night!

Now that we are back from the trip, we plan to analyze the images we took for a lab for ASTR341, and spot (fingers crossed) some standard stars that would help us estimate the distance to Segue 2 and 3. It is fun to solve problem sets, but it is much more satisfying to do something hands-on that produces a meaningful result, like this project. Even if we don’t get the result we are expecting, we still developed a better idea how real observers observe, and I personally got to observe the disk of Milky Way with naked eyes!

The five best things that happened to me and Emily Cunningham during our 12 am – 6 am shift at the 0.9m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory last night:

5. Mastering the art of filling the dewar with liquid nitrogen.

4. Overcoming a myriad of technical issues, including the fact that the telescope would not move at 6 am.

3. Not falling asleep.

2. Managing to obtain several good images of Segue II, a candidate dwarf galaxy, for science!

1. Taking exposures of the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula in four different filters. We hope to combine these to make a beautiful picture when we get back to Haverford!

Better than all of these things: not finding scorpions or snakes in our beds!

Hello Astronoblog enthusiasts! Maya Barlev here, Astrophysics major and Haverford class of 2012! This semester I’m in beautiful Honolulu, HI on a program called “A Semester ALMOST Abroad.” It has been WONDERFUL so far– hiking, going to the beach, taking classes at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy…

AND, two weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to observe here:

… at the Keck Telescope on the peak of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawai’i! Keck has the largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world! As stated by the Keck Website: “Each telescope stands eight stories tall, weighs 300 tons and operates with nanometer precision. The telescopes’ primary mirrors are 10 meters in diameter and are each composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as a single piece of reflective glass.” Pretty cool, huh? I actually didn’t have time to make it up to the summit to see these incredible telescopes in person, but instead, I observed from here:

This is at Keck Headquarters, several thousand feet closer to sea level. And, this is where all the observing magic happens. All of the computers behind me control the telescope remotely, determining exposure times, focusing the mirrors, adjusting the positioning and so on.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me explain why I was here in the first place. Since this summer, I’ve worked with Prof. Beth Willman exploring the detectability of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda. I’ve learned a lot about this field of Astronomy and the many challenges Astronomers face when trying to find and then analyze the properties of these elusive satellite galaxies. Beth’s colleague, James Bullock, is exploring similar issues, and had telescope time on Mauna Kea for two nights in September. Knowing that I would be in Hawai’i for the semester, Beth asked James if it would be alright for me to act as an observing assistant on this run.

So, thanks to Beth, James, and the Haverford KINSC Travel Stipend, I was able to go from O’ahu to the Big Island and observe the spectroscopic properties of several Andromeda satellite dwarf galaxies! I observed with Erik Tollerud, James’ graduate student at University of California Irvine. The goals of this run were to look specifically at a few of M31’s (Andromeda’s) faintest dwarfs and examine their stellar populations and ultimately their dark matter components. This research is highly related to the work I do with Beth, but instead of working theoretically from computer simulations, I was able to see this field of research from an observational standpoint.

The itinerary for the weekend was as follows: Arrive Thursday, and try to stay up as late as humanly possible to get used to pulling all-nighters for the purposes of science. Friday, sleep in as late as possible for the same reason. Friday afternoon, prepare the equiptment for observing through many alignments, tests, and so on. After dinner Friday night, begin observing! Every hour or so, we’d need to adjust the coordinates, realign, and focus the telescope. Every minute of dark-sky is precious, and so we had to be efficient. One of the coolest things about observing was that not only were we in an extremely high-tech room with about a dozen computer moniters, but a handful of other scientists were actually also telecommed into the room. So, throughout the night, we were in communication with people in California, Australia, and, of course, Operational Assistants at the peak of Mauna Kea. It was pretty funny to meet a handful of scientists face-to-face who were also thousands of miles away. Saturday was the same in terms of scheduling, but was much easier since we had things set up and ready.

Overall it was an absolutely incredible experience. It was such a privilege to see professional astronomy at work from the modern, observational standpoint. I learned so much, and had a blast doing it! HUGE thank-yous go out to Erik for teaching me everything while at Keck, James for allowing me to be a part of his research, the KISNC for funding me, and, of course, Beth for making it all happen! ALOHA!

Hi everyone, my name is Erin Boettcher and I’m an astrophysics major in Haverford’s class of 2012. Through the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, I am spending the summer in a research experience for undergrads program at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I am now three weeks into the ten week program, and I must say that it has been an excellent experience so far.

Along with my advisor, Dr. Steven Souza, and my research partner, I am working on the starting stages of a project called “H-alpha Monitoring of Emission-Line Stars in Young Clusters.” The project focuses on stars with spectral type Be, or rapidly rotating stars with one or more emission lines in their spectra. We are particularly interested in Be stars with H-alpha emission lines that are found in open clusters. Although these emission lines are known to vary with time, the mechanism behind this variability is not entirely understood. Using Williams’ 0.6 meter telescope, a CCD camera, and on-band and off-band filters, we intend to implement long term monitoring of such stars in order to better understand this aspect of stellar structure and evolution. Over the course of the summer, we hope to evaluate the project’s viability, select stars for study, begin initial observations, and establish effective methods of data reduction and analysis. Seeing a project built from the ground up is exciting to experience!

The Williams College campus has been a great environment for summer research so far. There is a great camaraderie not only among the students working in the astronomy department but among those working in other science departments as well. In addition to the eight students doing research in astronomy, there are over 150 students doing research in biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, and math. Students and professors make an effort to interact with each other both within and outside of their own departments, including weekly lunches accompanied by research talks, afternoon breaks to play Trivial Pursuit (students against professors — which is bad news for the students!), and friendly competitions between departments in activities such as ultimate Frisbee. We have also been trained to give weekly shows in Williams’ planetarium, so I’ll hopefully be giving my first show this week.

Overall, I’ve had a great start to my summer here at Williams. I know that there is a lot of work to be done over the next seven weeks, but I look forward to watching our project grow and evolve. Every morning when I leave my dorm, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be able to spend my summer on such a beautiful campus doing work that feels more like fun!

That’s it for now…best of luck to everyone else doing research this summer! 🙂

– Erin

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