Carbon stars are a rare subset of evolved stars that contain enhanced carbon in their atmospheres. They are examples of intermediate-age asymptotic giant branch and their demographics provide insight into the star formation history of their host galaxy over the last few billion years. Their enhanced carbon manifests itself in the form of specific molecular absorption features in the spectra of these stars. Because of their rarity in part, not much is known about these stars’ spectra – particularly at red/far-red wavelengths and at moderate to high spectral resolution. Our goal is to use an algorithm to automatically identify carbon star spectra in our sample of thousands of stars in the Andromeda galaxy and characterize their spectra. These Andromeda spectra were obtained with one of the world’s most powerful telescope and spectrograph combinations.
Mentor: Katie Hamren, Graduate Student
Secondary Mentors: Dr. Elisa Toloba, Prof. Raja GuhaThakurta, Ms. Corinne Rushing, Mr. NickTaber