Astronoblog

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)!

For the last two years, I’ve hosted a large dinner party at my house for all of the astronomy students at Haverford and Bryn Mawr (the vast majority of whom are in a class of mine in any given year). Last year, a post about the inaugural astronomy party kicked off this blog.

I was looking through my inbox tonight and found this picture from this year’s party:

This photo captures a nice cross-section of Haverford astronomy. From left to right Maya Barlev (’12), Emily Cunningham (’12), Erin Boettcher (’12, sitting in chair and bearing a passing resemblance to me), me (sitting on floor), Ross Fadely (postdoc), Leigh Schaefer (’13), Alyssa Mayo (’13), and Erica Hopkins (’14). All of the students in this pic also happen to be doing astronomy or physics research this summer. Pretty cool.

Some good connections were forged during this dinner (with Steve Boughn as a special guest), including us realizing that Sarah Sofia (’14) and Miriam Fuchs (’13) were both going to be in Boston during the American Astronomical Society meeting. So we included them in our fun. (I need to ping Bill Forman of the CfA for a photo that he snapped there of a bunch of us Haverfordians!)

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!

There are five students at Haverford this summer doing astronomy research:

Aspen deVries, Haverford College (’14)
Alyssa Mayo, Haverford College (’13)
Rebecca Nakaba, Bennington College (’13)
Ana Nourmahnad, Haverford College (’14)
Sam Storck-Post, Beloit College (’12)

See how happy and smart they look:

There are lots of firsts for all of us this summer. For me, its the first time I’ve worked with REU students from the KNAC REU program. That is what brought Sam and Rebecca to Haverford. Its also the first time I’ve had a lab that was heavily stocked with students new to research. This means that there has been lots of Linux and IDL learning going on. Yay for computer programming.

These five students are working on three different projects:

Aspen – Investigating whether we can use the observed internal kinematics of Milky Way globular clusters and dwarf galaxies to put limits on the validity of the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics model of gravity (MOND).
Alyssa and Ana – Investigating three candidates for dwarf galaxies identified in RCS2 survey data, both using the original RCS2 catalog data and using follow-up observations obtained on the Magellan telescope in Chile.
Rebecca and Sam – Investigating how efficiently (or inefficiently!) broad-band photometry separates giant stars from dwarf stars, in the SDSS ugriz filter set and (hopefully) also with ugriz+ UKIDSS and/or WISE infrared observations.

We are three weeks in, and everyone is now comfortable working in the Linux environment, has learned a lot of astronomy jargon, and is independently writing IDL programs to perform calculations and to make nice figures displaying results. I look forward to seeing where these projects all go. I can’t believe that the 10-week summer research window is already 30% over.

Many Haverford students are traveling the country (and world) in pursuit of astronomy this summer. I’ll introduce the students who are engaging in off-campus activities in this post, and then over the summer they will each in turn say “hi” via this blog and update us with their activities. (In a separate post, I’ll introduce my summer research group here and what they’re investigating.)

Maya Barlev (’12) – In the Netherlands working with the Universe Awareness (UNAWE) organization, supported by Haverford’s CPGC student internship program
Erin Boettcher (’12) – REU program at the American Museum of Natural History studying brown dwarfs and their spectral properties
Emily Cunningham (’12) – REU program at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory studying double quasars
Miriam Fuchs (’13) – At Boston University, supported by Haverford’s KINSC student research program, studying low mass stars
Jacob Gilbert (’12) – KNAC REU program at Swarthmore using their 24″ telescope to look for transiting planets in open star clusters
Erica Hopkins (’14) – KNAC REU program at Colgate, I think using their telescope to participate in the long-term monitoring of a quasar
Andrew Sturner (’12) – At the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, supported by Haverford’s KINSC student research program, working in their Solar Astrophysics group

Ivan Meehan, one of our astronomy majors, is also doing off campus research in a physics REU program.

Congratulations to all of these students for earning their summer positions. I can’t wait to hear what they are up to!

Its been so long since my last post, this post won’t be the one where I attempt to do justice to all the great things our astronomy students have been up to for the last four months. That post will come next week after our big end-of-year astronomy dinner party. 

Instead, I want to share a link to this fantastic comic (written with two particle physicists) that explains some things about dark matter:

Dark Matters, A Conversation with Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng

The science explained in this comic is the theory that motivates most of the research in my group here at Haverford, even though a lot of what we do is observational. We aim to investigate: Where is the dark matter/where should particle physicists look for it? Where shouldn’t they waste they time? Are observations of the universe in the neighborhood of the Milky Way consistent with the predictions of this theory?

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!

Check out this color image of the Orion Nebula that Tim Douglas (’11) constructed from images obtained by Annie Preston (’12) and Emily Cunningham (’12).   They obtained their observations at 5 am one night (in terrible observing conditions!) over Fall break with the S2KB camera on the 0.9m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.  Tim (and everyone else in our Observational Astronomy class) used IDL take the raw telescope data and turn it into nice, 3-color images:

Over the summer, there was a fantastic set of Hubble Space Telescope comedy/outreach pieces done by the character Milky J, culminating in his trip to NASA’s Goddard Flight Center.

The students in my Fall 2010 Astronomical Ideas class just collaborated on podcasts inspired by Milky J’s love for HST. They investigated one of: M87, the Red Rectangle Nebula, the Bubble Nebula, the M22 globular cluster, or the M64 Black Eye galaxy. Students then developed an mp3 recording based on their findings. Every one of the presentations were fantastic in different ways.

Here are five of the podcasts, one for each of the 5 objects that students had the option to study… and for each podcast here, there is another equally good one I didn’t post! I’ll write a sequel to this post in a couple of weeks.

Here is the Mystronomy Science Theater podcast resulting from Rachel Cholst, Rachel Kobasa, and Hilary Brashear’s investigation of the Red Rectangle Nebula:Red Rectangle Nebula

Emma Richards and Rushil Gambir are interviewed by Tiffany Fritz to share their expertise on NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula, and on Hubble Space Telescope: Bubble Nebula

For corny laughs combined with lots of great astronomy, listen to Bill Board’s (Jay Gorchow) interview of Dr. Den Eb (Zach Reisch) and Cass Iopeia (Iris Lippert) to learn about HST’s observation of the M22 globular cluster: M22

Katie Drooyan, Richard Sarro, and Emily Bailinson give us a historical and modern account of the fascinating Black Eye Galaxy: Black Eye Galaxy

Last, but not least: Especially for fans of This American Life, three acts on the M87 galaxy written and performed by Kyle McCloskey, Emily Letts, and Thea Hogarth: M87

A few weeks ago, Scott Engle (visiting instructor) and I spent some quality time with Haverford’s 16-inch telescope. One of Scott’s hobbies is photography, so he brought his digital SLR camera along and hooked it up to our telescope. Here are a couple of things the beautiful things that we saw, Jupiter and three of its moons and our own Moon: