Mentor: Yat Li, Professor…Continue Reading Development of a Novel Nanostructured Plasmonic Probe for Targeted Chemical and Biomedical Detection with Molecular Specificity
Galaxy Collisions at High Redshift
We will identify and measure the signature of recent galaxy mergers at high redshift by quantifying tidal features (the stellar mess that mergers leave behind). We will do so using images from the Hubble space telescope. Such an analysis has not yet been done for galaxies at high redshift and it would provide an important…Continue Reading Galaxy Collisions at High Redshift
A Study of Dust-Reddened Star Clusters in the Andromeda Galaxy
Mentor: Raja GuhaThakurta, Professor Secondary Mentors: Ms. Claire Dorman, Ms. Katie Hamren…Continue Reading A Study of Dust-Reddened Star Clusters in the Andromeda Galaxy
Dwarf Galaxies in a Dense Environment
Dwarf galaxies are the most common galaxy type in the Universe. They come in a few different flavors. The ones in the dense Coma cluster of galaxies are inert (i.e., non-star-forming) and belong to a class of galaxies known as “dwarf ellipticals” (dEs). The physical origin of this class of galaxies remains poorly understood. The…Continue Reading Dwarf Galaxies in a Dense Environment
Substructure and Density Profile of the Milky Way's Stellar Halo from Deep Lens Survey Data
Mentor: Paul Thorman, Postdoctoral Scholar (UC Davis) Secondary Mentors: Prof. Raja GuhaThakurta, Dr. Alis Deason (UCSC postdoc)…Continue Reading Substructure and Density Profile of the Milky Way's Stellar Halo from Deep Lens Survey Data
Scattered Light from Quasars: Connecting Deep Observations with State-of-the-Art Computer Simulations
Quasars are the most luminous persistent sources in the sky, powered by rapid accretion onto a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. The extreme energy output of a quasar is theorized to cause dramatic impacts on their host galaxies, like rapidly quenching star formation and launching enormous jets. But measuring the properties…Continue Reading Scattered Light from Quasars: Connecting Deep Observations with State-of-the-Art Computer Simulations
The Role of Supermassive Black Holes in Quenching and Triggering Star Formation
Every galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole in its center, and the masses of each are correlated over several orders of magnitude. This suggests that the mass growth of a galaxy (through star formation) is tightly coupled to the mass growth of its black hole (through accretion of gas and stars). But the physics behind…Continue Reading The Role of Supermassive Black Holes in Quenching and Triggering Star Formation