Category: Astronomy

Background: Galaxy cannibalism/merging appears to be an important process through which galaxies grow in mass/size and evolve. There are many examples of ongoing collisions between two large galaxies and many involving the tidal disruption of a small (“dwarf”) galaxy by a large one. We have identified a rare case of a dwarf galaxy cannibalizing an…Continue Reading Studying a Rare Dwarf Galaxy Cannibalism Event

Individual galaxies are dynamic evolving systems, but observational astronomers are limited to capturing them at a single point in their lives. To connect observations at different times and to understand what they mean requires a theoretical model. We have built a simple (1 dimensional) but powerful code to simulate how galaxies have evolved over the…Continue Reading Building Galaxies

By measuring the structure of the most distant part of our Galaxy, we can learn about how our Galaxy formed and how other galaxies form.  We will do this by counting stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, and by using the inverse-square law to get the distances to stars whose brightness we know….Continue Reading The Structure of the Milky Way Halo

The student will take the results from an algorithmic search of the Kepler dataset and work on verifying if tagged light curves actually contain signatures from planetary transits.  The light curves marked positive will then be analyzed to determine accurate size/period/eccentricity of the planet(s). Additionally, the student will use preexisting procedures to create model transits…Continue Reading Searching for Jupiter Analogs in the Kepler Dataset

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

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 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

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

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

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