tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36126976386785944122024-03-05T02:08:49.380-07:00CANDELSCosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy SurveyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-77954374860712105092016-08-30T08:00:00.000-07:002016-08-30T08:00:38.949-07:00From PhD Astronomer to Data Scientist<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Like so many other recent graduates I have decided to trade in research in academia for research in the tech industry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A few years ago, about half way into my PhD program, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after I graduated. Would I enter the nomadic post-doc life? Am I actually qualified to do anything else? It was at this time I took a class simply called <i>Data Analysis in Astronomy</i>. This class really opened my eyes to a multitude of tools such as: principal component analysis, k-mean clustering, and many other statistical techniques. We had to do a final group project where we developed a facial recognition routine using PCA. This was a fun assignment and really got me thinking about a career where these tools are used in an applied way like this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The other formative experience was listening to a talk by an astronomy professor/data scientist where he talked about some of the under appreciated results of statistical analysis. For example, he talked about how in Florida right before a hurricane, Targets/Wal-Marts were experiencing a huge spike in sales of a specific item, but it wasn't an obvious one. Not tissue paper, nor bread, nor eggs, nor milk, nor water nor whatever most people would immediately think to stock up on. Instead it was pop-tarts, which kids like, don't need to be heated to eat and are cheap. Here's a perfect example of a result that makes perfect sense when you reflect back on it but wouldn't be immediately apparent upon first thought.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVa7PsvPu25hWexYEAPPe1Ntp7w0bKnZm4xJLMQnOFDirtcroVi9DLVwM1nJwYT73BulOot5ZxySj3-XydPCcslxjSXNEjLNtB2at5hBpOlZvce4Dt-4OWthyTdXZ3hoIf2Hg59dMkhlo/s1600/mds.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVa7PsvPu25hWexYEAPPe1Ntp7w0bKnZm4xJLMQnOFDirtcroVi9DLVwM1nJwYT73BulOot5ZxySj3-XydPCcslxjSXNEjLNtB2at5hBpOlZvce4Dt-4OWthyTdXZ3hoIf2Hg59dMkhlo/s640/mds.png" width="451" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">(Funny this looks a lot like me! courtesy:<br /></span><a href="http://www.marketingdistillery.com/2014/08/30/data-science-skill-set-explained/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">http://www.marketingdistillery.com/2014/08/30/data-science-skill-set-explained/</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">)</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After taking that class and listening to that speaker I realized I was more interested in the tools used to analyze data than the data itself. I discovered I wanted to potentially solve a ton more problems than just in astronomy. So I focused my thesis on machine learning (PCA, random forest, time series analysis) so I could more effectively market myself for a post-grad school life.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg24TIdGiIBjQvAAYaQF9GMj80RvgE_3eGzDQLAO7HWJsafXRULaZ879XS7My_4-OXkxzolwF8QcuseWCwyz37EjlkjcGXu-I9-onciHJhhUvhD0uNqn8nNgp0TfuifG5rU8T3IZoOiGNQ/s1600/tdifordatabricksv2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg24TIdGiIBjQvAAYaQF9GMj80RvgE_3eGzDQLAO7HWJsafXRULaZ879XS7My_4-OXkxzolwF8QcuseWCwyz37EjlkjcGXu-I9-onciHJhhUvhD0uNqn8nNgp0TfuifG5rU8T3IZoOiGNQ/s320/tdifordatabricksv2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Applying to jobs and fellowship incubator opportunities are a little different than <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/02/aas-and-job-hunt.html">applying to a post-doc</a> or graduate school. I decided to apply to the <a href="http://insightdatascience.com/">Insight Data Science</a> and <a href="https://www.thedataincubator.com/">Data Incubator fellowship</a> programs, which seek to provide training to academics so that they can transfer their skill sets to work in tech. Additionally, the <a href="https://dssg.uchicago.edu/">Data Science for the Social Good</a> fellowship looks like a great place to go if you're interesting in working for non-profits or city governments.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnUREFgbAsBGRoYGLKrEorGIqgVC46Acdn4H16eZpE0naFIb4tnbqwlMQpZAxpn4U1R7fUUFvGI2MyfO_07UKZeAAc513Hxx8Mkn6sSpk5u2UTNtIq4zV070Td_Fj-WZemcgSwbNtXlg/s1600/Insight-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnUREFgbAsBGRoYGLKrEorGIqgVC46Acdn4H16eZpE0naFIb4tnbqwlMQpZAxpn4U1R7fUUFvGI2MyfO_07UKZeAAc513Hxx8Mkn6sSpk5u2UTNtIq4zV070Td_Fj-WZemcgSwbNtXlg/s200/Insight-logo.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These programs offer different resources to accomplish those goals so it would be helpful to ask recent graduates about how the liked the experience. Insight's application was easier since all it required was a short 30-min chat with them to explain a project (thesis or other) that uses data. It's important to have something you can show visually. Data Incubator's application was much more intense. They require that you solve 2 difficult data problems, plus you are to propose the project you will work on during the fellowship. I didn't quite realize this project had to be near the final stages even before applying, so its best to come up with something well before the application due date. All told, I was offered a spot in the <a href="http://insighthealthdata.com/">Insight Health data</a> science fellowship but in Boston. I was more interested in staying in the Baltimore/DC region so I decided to continue to look for jobs in the area.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After a short search on <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm">Glassdoor</a>, LinkedIn, and other job websites I found my current company, SocialCode. They focus on analyzing ads and ad interactions on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I applied to a few other places but the interview process was pretty similar for every company. Each began with a very short (~10 min) phone screen just to make sure I was who I said I was. Then a short (~30 min) chat with a current data scientist about my thesis work and they'd ask me some follow-up questions about the data analysis. Sometime in the process, the company would send a short data project that I had 3-7 days to complete. It was usually an open ended question to see how I would analyze data I'd never seen before. This project was then followed by a longer (~45-60 min) chat about the results of the project. Now if they liked what they'd seen and heard from me I'd be invited to an in person interview. At these I would meet with a few current employees and they would grill me on my research, abstract data analysis questions, specific computer science questions among other topics. Honestly, the oral examination of abstract data analysis was much more difficult than defending my thesis!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm excited about what the future of data science will bring and how I can contribute, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was going to miss astronomy. All the wonderful people I've met and interesting projects and teams I've worked on have been a great source of happiness. The academic route was just not for me. Everyone should follow their path as they see it, sometimes that means academia but sometimes not. Don't let anyone else's expectations for you determine your trajectory.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14507900446957016126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-34328584128487333622016-02-08T08:00:00.000-07:002016-02-08T11:43:40.498-07:00The VIMOS UltraDeep Survey – a spectroscopic survey of high redshift galaxies<style>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <a href="http://cesam.lam.fr/vuds/index.php">VIMOS UltraDeep Survey (short: VUDS)</a> is an observational
program to gain spectroscopic measurements for ~10,000 galaxies at high
<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshift</a>, when the Universe was only between 1- 3 billion years old (today, the
Universe is 13.8 billion years old). This is a particularly interesting era to
study in terms of galaxy evolution since astronomers expect galaxies at that
epoch to look very different from today. For example, at that early time we <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">observe</span> that galaxies have a much more disturbed <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/06/what-types-of-galaxies-are-there.html">morphology</a> compared to the
beautiful structured spiral galaxies or smooth elliptical galaxies that we see
in the local Universe. We expect that galaxies formed many more stars at that time
partly triggered by disturbances from the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/09/the-role-of-mergers-in-galaxy-evolution.html">merging of galaxies</a> but also because
more gas was still available to form stars in those galaxies. The time
between redshift 2 to 6 (i.e. the first 1-3 billion years of the Universe’s
age) is thus a major epoch of galaxy assembly.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9l4nvmqrIdJADwvqndImZ1Gbm5c8bE6SwTdhOIREHHxZR1VlV-QSeOVJgWjXuZ8hxIfive_SiPTO4EkYNt2x4-WWOKaxPbRbMHIzVxIZ7tG25ZLXNnzzHt5ni_LPBQ5LsJw3ADKC75o/s1600/p3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9l4nvmqrIdJADwvqndImZ1Gbm5c8bE6SwTdhOIREHHxZR1VlV-QSeOVJgWjXuZ8hxIfive_SiPTO4EkYNt2x4-WWOKaxPbRbMHIzVxIZ7tG25ZLXNnzzHt5ni_LPBQ5LsJw3ADKC75o/s640/p3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 1: Very Large Telescope in Chile, photo credit: R. Thomas.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With CANDELS, galaxies in that epoch are studied mostly
based on photometry, meaning images taken at different wavelengths. We
described in <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/08/the-multi-wavelength-shapes-of-galaxies.html">earlier blog posts</a> how with photometry at many different
wavelengths astronomers are able to study the properties of galaxies through
comparing the observed data to model galaxy spectra. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With VUDS galaxy evolution is approached from the
spectroscopic side. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum">spectrum</a> of an object is <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">created by <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dispersing all <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">its emitted</span> light<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> by <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">directing it through a disperser <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lik<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e a prism</span></span></span>, meaning the light is split up <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">according to its wavelength. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An easy example <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is the creation of <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a rainbow where <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the light from the sun <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hits</span></span> raindrops in the air which a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ct as <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dispersers and split the originally "white" sunlight <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">up <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by wa<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">velen<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">g<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">th, creating the typic<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">al coloured stripes</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>. Such spectra </span></span></span>allow<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> us to <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">study the properties o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f galaxies </span>in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">much more detail compared to the study of images alone<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The VUDS survey covers about 1 square degree in the sky. As
a comparison the diameter of the full moon is about 0.5 degrees and its area is
~0.2 square degrees, which means it’s a fifth of the area covered by the VUDS
survey. However, this 1 square degree of area of the VUDS survey is split over
3 separate fields in the sky that have been observed with a lot of different
instruments and at many wavelengths already, creating a unique and precious
data set for astronomers to carry out their studies. The three fields are the
<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/search/label/COSMOS">COSMOS field</a> (which overlaps with the CANDELS-COSMOS field), the Extended-Chandra
Deep Field South (which overlaps with the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/search/label/GOODS">CANDELS-GOODS-South field</a>) and the
VVDS-2h field. Within those 3 fields spectra of ~10,000 galaxies were taken with
the VIMOS multi-object spectrograph at the <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt/">Very Large Telescope (VLT)</a> in Chile (Figure 1). We described how multi-object spectroscopy works in more detail in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">this</span> <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2015/11/preparing-multi-object-spectroscopy.html">recent post</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. In short, </span>suffice it to say that with that instrument, astronomers are
able to take a spectrum of many galaxies at the same time. VUDS is the largest spectroscopic survey of galaxies at
these early cosmic times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Two of the 3 fields covered by VUDS overlap with the CANDELS
area. The spectra and spectroscopic redshifts in that overlap area (~ 700
galaxies) were just <a href="http://cesam.lam.fr/vuds/DR1/">publicly released</a> by the VUDS team.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpMq7Mpi6WtlKqyLuVmyCrbkblQnDtDt6MlaxByEHlQGTnuSt_Y1zFZSNppo8Kq6AYh5OT-VD8AySgB1X6HTTwn_knqItQMpRNVyWI_mMoVBCxDp5D7iKiWwtF57HizEzZ3wHuLxXfQSE/s1600/stack_spectra_wLines-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpMq7Mpi6WtlKqyLuVmyCrbkblQnDtDt6MlaxByEHlQGTnuSt_Y1zFZSNppo8Kq6AYh5OT-VD8AySgB1X6HTTwn_knqItQMpRNVyWI_mMoVBCxDp5D7iKiWwtF57HizEzZ3wHuLxXfQSE/s640/stack_spectra_wLines-1.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure
2: Stacked spectrum of galaxies between redshift 3 to 4 with the most
reliable spectroscopic redshifts in VUDS. Vertical dashed lines indicate
known spectral lines which are used to determine spectroscopic redshift
and galaxy properties.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For the VUDS survey, the objects which were targeted for the
spectroscopy, were selected primarily based on their redshift as derived purely
from photometry (again, see this <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/08/the-multi-wavelength-shapes-of-galaxies.html">blog post here</a>). Additionally, some
sources were added based on their <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/08/how-to-find-distant-galaxies.html">photometric colours</a> (i.e. the difference in brightness between two wavelength bands) which indicate a high
redshift. These objects were then observed with two different grisms -- one for
the blue wavelength end and one for the red wavelength end – for about 14 hours
each. The resulting spectra cover a wavelength range from the blue optical to
the very red optical. This means that for these high-redshift galaxies, we
really observed their ultra-violet to blue optical wavelength range which are
shifted due to the redshift into the optical wavelength range covered by the
<a href="http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/vimos.html">VIMOS instrument</a>. This wavelength range reveals many properties of galaxies,
especially with regard to their star formation. In Figure 2 we show you a stacked
spectrum of some VUDS sources in which also the spectral lines are indicated.
In Figure 3 you can see all the spectra of the VUDS survey compiled into a picture and sorted by redshift, where each line represents one spectrum. Emission and absorption lines in this image are nicely visible in this as bright and dark lines that stretch across the image from left bottom to top right. This also illustrates how spectral features are redshifted towards redder wavelengths. The most common spectral lines and features in these spectra are the Hydrogen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_series">Lyman-alpha</a>, L<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ym<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">an-beta and Lyman-gamma lines, the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_limit">Lyman limi</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_limit">t</a> (below which almost all <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">emission<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is absor<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">bed by neutral Hydrogen around newly formed stars<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span>)<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the Carbon lines (CII, CIII and C<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">IV, where the Roma<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n numbers behind the letters indicate the ionization level of the element</span>) and lines from Hel<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ium (He), Oxygen (O)<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, S<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ilicon (Si) and Al<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">umini<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">um (Al). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>T</span>hese lines are used not only to determine the spectroscopic redshift of these
galaxies (i.e., through their known rest-frame wavelength), but also other
galaxy properties such as star formation and che<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mical composition of the galaxies</span>. Overall in VUDS we were able to determine reliable
spectroscopic redshifts for ~6000 galaxies which cover a large range of
brightnesses and stellar masses. Some of the galaxies in this survey form up to 1000 solar
masses per year! </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVX97HYq4eie2CnRXgfN6Lo3F96GsqUEMWURfXvABxS4xt-t4czS3vzNncEmHH3Id4E6RzYjyKVLLa9jJJPsDjfUo9NV3SIJVkMgD7SkdSXE60RoIahz9nLDkMKZYuwwUlnEWSPygNng/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-10+at+5.35.54+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVX97HYq4eie2CnRXgfN6Lo3F96GsqUEMWURfXvABxS4xt-t4czS3vzNncEmHH3Id4E6RzYjyKVLLa9jJJPsDjfUo9NV3SIJVkMgD7SkdSXE60RoIahz9nLDkMKZYuwwUlnEWSPygNng/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-11-10+at+5.35.54+PM.png" width="496" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 3: Compilation of each spectrum tak<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">en</span> in the VIMOS UltraDeep Survey and sorted by redshift. Redshift increases from the bottom to the top, meaning the further up in the image we go, the further into the past we look and the younger the Universe is. Marked are spectral emission (bright spots in the spectrum) and absorption lines (faint spots in the spectrum) at each redshift. This figure illustrates nicely how certain spectral features seem to be present in galaxies in this survey at the various redshifts and thus across cosmic time. Figure from <a href="http://de.arxiv.org/abs/1403.3938">Le Fevre et al. 2015, A&A 576, A79 </a></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since the completion of the observations, many researchers
in the international VUDS team work on all aspects of galaxy formation and
evolution, from morphology to identifying proto-galaxy-clusters and groups,
from studying the ultra-violet spectroscopic properties of very young galaxies to
the merging history of the Universe, in alignment with the science goals of the
overall survey. If you are interested in following the results from the VUDS survey,
you can find our Facebook page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/vuds.survey/">here</a> and our Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/VUDS_Survey?lang=en">here</a>.</span></div>
Janine Pforrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01420302849628597110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-25420718927374946202015-12-17T09:00:00.000-07:002015-12-17T09:00:13.460-07:00Where is the Dust in Distant Galaxies?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-types-of-galaxies-are-there.html">previous post</a> w</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e wrote about the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-do-we-measure-galaxy-morphology.html">morphology</a> of a galaxy's star light. Most galaxies have matter that we can see in 3 forms: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star">stars</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas">gas</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_dust">dust</a>.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGNIwz0CcvpUTLMNWydc5XWJF7KQ-rhEJ_gbOpkjFsp0Da1qYgPI7dKD5EYoa7wJHnqEMmGQsdnOOaOqYo4qeOXEyhmGbYRrqLsRSGH2MWabVnFfsk96utNFAlQd2udd5GFh1M0YMXvQ/s1600/m51.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGNIwz0CcvpUTLMNWydc5XWJF7KQ-rhEJ_gbOpkjFsp0Da1qYgPI7dKD5EYoa7wJHnqEMmGQsdnOOaOqYo4qeOXEyhmGbYRrqLsRSGH2MWabVnFfsk96utNFAlQd2udd5GFh1M0YMXvQ/s1600/m51.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 1: M51 at optical wavelengths of light. Credit: NASA, ESA, </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 1 shows a picture of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Galaxy">M51</a> at optical wavelengths of light. The yellow, red, and blue parts of the picture are the regions hosting M51's stars which are visible to us. Along the spiral arms we also see dark structures. The dark parts of the picture are the regions hosting M51's stars which are invisible to us --- the stars which are obscured by dust.</span></div>
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Dust grains in M51 absorb light from these stars and reemit that light at infrared wavelengths. Figure 2 shows a picture of M51 at an infrared wavelength of light. The spiral arms in the infrared picture line up with the dark structure in the optical picture. We know where the dust is in M51. What about the dust in other galaxies?</div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">Figure 2: M51 at an infrared wavelength of light. Credit: IRSA.</span></td></tr>
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As we study galaxies that are further and further away from our own, we lose information on where the dust in these galaxies is. Infrared telescopes cannot produce pictures of a distant galaxy at the same resolution as pictures of M51. We can guess at where the dust is by looking at dark structures in pictures at optical wavelengths. Your eye is good at picking out dark structures in a many-color image. What is a dark structure in a two-color image?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Figure 3 shows a zoomed in picture of M51. The dark structure is black in many places. In many other places the dark structure is adjacent to a red spot, a spot missing blue and yellow colors. Dust grains in M51 are good at obscuring blue and yellow light and less good at obscuring red light. If we measure the brightness of a spot in a red image, and the brightness at the same location in a blue image, many galaxies will have the same ratio between those brightnesses. The ratio comes from two aspects of the dust: the sizes of the grains and the number of grains. A dark structure in a distant galaxy might be a red spot with a weak blue spot.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrG2by6IfkAHBfOS6C1arq3OGOrZV9RtF3uGikO2sp55LkRCts4Up6ZPNzXu1eaQHSySu8D0FYKn0deN2eOhzHMIpvJVyMs_lX0FUnoEJnzB46CDkCRyWWNPo2Z9cVwwb7AOj9upIN65U/s1600/m51_zoom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrG2by6IfkAHBfOS6C1arq3OGOrZV9RtF3uGikO2sp55LkRCts4Up6ZPNzXu1eaQHSySu8D0FYKn0deN2eOhzHMIpvJVyMs_lX0FUnoEJnzB46CDkCRyWWNPo2Z9cVwwb7AOj9upIN65U/s1600/m51_zoom.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Figure 3: a cropped and zoomed-in view of M51 at optical<br />wavelengths of light. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI),<br />and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).</span></td></tr>
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The red color in the image of M51 is due to light from Hydrogen atoms. The <a href="http://hubblesite.org/">Hubble Space Telescope</a> has an instrument allowing us to see the light from Hydrogen atoms in distant galaxies; it has another instrument allowing us to see blue light from distant galaxies. I wrote a paper using CANDELS data to compare the brightnesses of the light at the two wavelengths. We conclude that we need more data!</div>
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The ratio of brightnesses between red spots and blue spots for distant galaxies is different from the ratio for local galaxies. Dust grains in distant galaxies might have different sizes compared to their sizes in M51, which would make them more or less good at obscuring red light compared to how they obscure blue and yellow light. We cannot distinguish between this hypothesis and the one saying that the number of grains differs.</div>
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NASA has a plan to launch several telescopes into space and connect them, which would solve the problem of resolution that prevents us from having detailed pictures at infrared wavelengths of distant galaxies. You can find out more about the Far-IR Surveyor here:</div>
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<a href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-committee/subcommittees/nac-astrophysics-subcommittee/astrophysics-roadmap/">http://science.nasa.gov/science-committee/subcommittees/nac-astrophysics-subcommittee/astrophysics-roadmap/</a></div>
</span>Kylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027886339877266861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-50184606406931260862015-11-24T09:00:00.000-07:002015-11-24T09:00:01.504-07:00Coming Out of the Dark Ages<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Until about 400,000 years after the <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-powered-the-big-bang/" target="_blank">Big Bang</a>, the Universe was mostly full of electrons and protons, zipping in random directions. It was only when the Universe cooled down enough, because of expansion, that electrons and protons had a chance to combine to form neutral hydrogen (the lightest element in the Universe) for the first time. This epoch is known as the <a href="http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/e/epoch+of+recombination" target="_blank">epoch of recombination</a>. The Universe then enters and remains in what we call the Dark Ages until the formation of the first luminous sources -- first stars, first galaxies, <a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/science/black_holes/" target="_blank">quasars</a>, and so on. During this period, the Universe was full of <a href="http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/N/neutral+hydrogen" target="_blank">neutral hydrogen</a>, and thus completely opaque to any ultra-violet (UV) radiation because neutral hydrogen is very efficient at absorbing UV radiation. Intense UV ionizing photons from the first stars and first galaxies then start to ionize their surrounding, forming ionized bubbles. These bubbles grow with time, and eventually the entire Universe was filled with ionized bubbles. The epoch during which this change of phase or transition occurred i.e., the ionization of most of the neutral hydrogen to ionized hydrogen -- is called the epoch of reionization (see Figure below). This was the last major transition in the history of the Universe, and had a significant impact on the <a href="http://www.windows2universe.org/the_universe/LSS.html" target="_blank">large scale structure</a> of the Universe. Therefore, this is one of the frontier research areas in modern observational <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology" target="_blank">cosmology</a>.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR-0gew1my9Tza2YnOyLKOeYy6k6hVo7ssC8xxzamtnFm6DcjzkP3TjA8vWAYKcoY2k7yBiKzm2KvtFVYk0PNdiPvJaFOIjzXu1wb5mnscEtutfZP0LMafZ9ZVnI5N8DGqzfwMX-ZbI7o/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-11-06+at+3.47.18+PM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Time
line history of the Universe from Big Bang (left) to the present day
Universe (right). Before the process of reionization, the Universe was
completely filled with neutral hydrogen. It is only after the formation
of first sources including first stars, first galaxies, that the neutral
hydrogen in the Universe started ionizing, and by about one billion
years after the Big Bang, most of the neutral hydrogen in the Universe
was <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">vaporized</span> marking the end of the epoch of reionization (Image
credit: NASA, ESA, A. Fields (STScI). </span></td></tr>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Probing the Epoch of Reionization<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One
of the most powerful and practical tools to probe the epoch of reionization is the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_series" target="_blank">Lyman-alpha</a> emission test. Lyman-alpha photons are a n=2 to n=1 transition in
neutral hydrogen which emits a photon with a wavelength of lambda=1215.67
Angstroms. In the presence of neutral hydrogen, Lyman-alpha photons are scattered again and again and eventually many of the Lyman-alpha photons are scattered away form our line of sight . As a result, we expect to see fewer and fewer galaxies with
Lyman-alpha emission as we probe higher and higher redshifts (closer to the Big
Bang).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To
study the epoch of reionization, we did exactly this using a large sample of very distant
(high-redshift) galaxy candidates selected from the <a href="https://www.spacetelescope.org/" target="_blank">Hubble Space Telescope</a>
(HST) <a href="http://candels.ucolick.org/" target="_blank">CANDELS survey</a> -- the largest galaxy survey ever undertaken using<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>HST.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To know the exact distance of a galaxy, it is critical to obtain
spectroscopic observations of these galaxies. We did this using a near-infrared
spectrograph,<a href="https://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/inst/mosfire/" target="_blank"> MOSFIRE</a>, on the <a href="http://www.keckobservatory.org/" target="_blank">Keck Telescope</a> located at 13,000 ft on top of
Mauna Kea, a dormant-volcano mountain in Hawaii. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To
our surprise, we discovered that most of the galaxies we observed did not show
Lyman-alpha emission. The figure below shows our results combined with previous
studies. This figure shows the Lyman-alpha equivalent width, the ratio of strength
of Lyman-alpha emission from a galaxy to its underlying blue stellar light
continuum (non Lyman-alpha light), as a function of redshift (or age of the Universe on the top
axis), as we probe closer and closer to the Big Bang. As can be seen, there are
fewer galaxies, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and at the same time the
strength of Lyman-alpha emission also decreases as we go to higher redshifts.
While this can be a result of a few different things, upon careful inspection,
we think that this is likely because of the Universe becoming more neutral as
we go beyond redshift ~7, and we are witnessing the epoch of reionization
in-progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9AHGmVyFbzlzUcTkDfwUgcH-pW7viXSgDe8qU1LLIL4bpeoecpMUL30qQkKqi-EhA2FPd1tN79MUKBkSuywTyNTN8WaH-UKpe3y9_wdO8kVwsbXQ3T3eGkd9qN_GnDHy-35JiFcul6X8/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-11-06+at+4.14.53+PM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This
Figure shows the evolution of strength of Lyman-alpha emission in
galaxies, as we get closer and closer to the Big Bang. As can be seen,
the strength of Lyman-alpha emission appears to be decreasing or in
other words we are missing vetry strong Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies as
we go towards higher redshifts. This is likely a consequence of
increasing neutral hydrogen, as expected from theoretical studies (Image
credit: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.4869" target="_blank">Tilvi et al 2014</a>).</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Currently,
Lyman-alpha emission provides the best tool to discover and confirm very
distant galaxies. While there are a few other emission lines that could be used to
confirm distance to a galaxy, their strengths compared to the Lyman-alpha
emission is much weaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite this,
we have made quite a significant progress in understanding the first billion
years of the Universe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The figure
below shows the summary of progress astronomers have made over the past few
years, understanding the transition of Universe from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a completely neutral to an ionized phase.
Below <a href="http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/cosmic_reference/redshift.html" target="_blank">redshift</a> of about 6, that is about 1 billion years after the Big Bang,
the Universe is almost completely full of ionized hydrogen—only one part in
10,000 is neutral. At redshifts greater than 6, the Universe becomes more and
more neutral. The <a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/about.html" target="_blank">James Webb Space Telescope </a>(JWST) will be very instrumental
in discovering galaxies within the first 600 Myrs, and will help us gain even more
insight into the details of the crucial epoch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SiiV9yRIEbEUEPCIPfvEAZKnqKMB8j5bJ4ndK3T7tMApuZL_DhizFFmDqxEwQmebivnNX2a9E8NeVatZhOjP2mtN4SBBfGoxdq75Cs1sBpXms4ji8td2G-DugqW3ONz0n3KEyzVKJ9g/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-11-06+at+3.41.35+PM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This
figure shows the evolution of neutral hydrogen fraction as a function
of redshift (or age of the Universe shown on top axis). Only one part in
10,000 is neutral below redshift of about 6 which implies that the
Universe is mostly ionized and the process of reionization has occurred
at redshifts greater than six, where the Universe is becoming
increasingly neutral (Image credit: V. Tilvi).</span></td></tr>
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<br /></div>
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V. Tilvihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01821816884956135379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-18203354235748029722015-11-19T08:00:00.000-07:002015-11-19T12:12:11.047-07:00Preparing Multi Object Spectroscopy Observations<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Although CANDELS is a photometric survey, many team members have proposed for and been granted observing time for CANDELS sources to obtain </span><a href="http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/asras/chemcomp_i/chemcomp_i.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">spectroscopy</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">. Such additional data not only provides us with a more accurate measurement of the distances of galaxies (aka redshift), but also with additional information to decode their properties, such as how many stars they are forming and how much dust is contained in the galaxies.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUbC1hDv48ub-ZmZMFsxmRvhFr68NgIjfqpBkhaq95RTuvwi5efL6qRPuEQ-jbrLwx5O4pimIkwAlRXNac1O6tyRh_tiD2koDQMDILyGIvXpHD9IhrnmkgeYhXOMKZZ_uBqqQV0Jdr_o/s1600/GMOS_COSMOS_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUbC1hDv48ub-ZmZMFsxmRvhFr68NgIjfqpBkhaq95RTuvwi5efL6qRPuEQ-jbrLwx5O4pimIkwAlRXNac1O6tyRh_tiD2koDQMDILyGIvXpHD9IhrnmkgeYhXOMKZZ_uBqqQV0Jdr_o/s400/GMOS_COSMOS_1.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 1: Example pointing for a MOS observation with the GMOS </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">instrument at the Gemini Telescope. The image in the background shows </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the targeted sky area. The cyan outline shows the field of view of the </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">instrument with the gaps between the 3 CCD detectors. The dashed outlined </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">box shows the sky area in which the guide star needs to be placed. The red </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"arm" shows the arm that holds the camera that monitors the guide star.</span></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Classically, spectroscopy was carried out object by object, by placing one long slit where your one object is located. With this you restrict the area which lets light through to the detector to a narrow slit and blocking out everything else around it. The light that enters the prism or grism through this slit is then dispersed according to its wavelength, creating a spectrum of the object. Bright spots highlight the presence of elements that emit at this frequency/wavelength, and dark spots tell us where certain elements absorbed light and stopped it from reaching us. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You can imagine though that carrying out such observations object by object is very time consuming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the last decades though, astronomical studies for galaxy evolution started to greatly profit from new instrumentation which allows us to observe many objects at the same time. This is not only true for taking images of the sky, but also for spectroscopic observations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One method to take spectroscopy of many objects at the same time is grism spectroscopy, which we showed you in our post about <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/07/candels-spectroscopy-infrared-grism.html">grism spectroscopy</a> with the Hubble Space Telescope. In that case nothing in your field of view is masked out and everything is dispersed. If your field of view is very crowded, meaning you have many many objects in your piece of sky, many spectra will overlap and will be hard to disentangle. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTVyH6xf3FrQGWOfErKWYCnFT9ZpR-WW1gSkFVEOcQrW5rOzIo5J5TBWSDoEIAoHJAKg7TgBBQbSIK1zgbYDY7FQdDSXDe801_kc8Vlhhcta3G4qEoQHOEncXJKupqzzsgVa0n5dizkE/s1600/2014-03-04+03.25.03+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTVyH6xf3FrQGWOfErKWYCnFT9ZpR-WW1gSkFVEOcQrW5rOzIo5J5TBWSDoEIAoHJAKg7TgBBQbSIK1zgbYDY7FQdDSXDe801_kc8Vlhhcta3G4qEoQHOEncXJKupqzzsgVa0n5dizkE/s400/2014-03-04+03.25.03+pm.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 2: I-band image of the piece of sky to be observed with Multi Object </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Spectroscopy within the mask-making software. The red outline shows the </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">field of view of the instrument, the blue stripes mark the gaps between the </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">detectors. All potential target objects are marked with different smaller </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">symbols according to their priority (blue triangles, green boxes, white circles </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and cyan diamonds for alignment stars).</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another method is multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) via slit-masks. With this method you can take spectra for many objects at the same time by placing slits on many objects and blocking out the rest of the sky. This requires the creation of so-called MOS-masks in which the slit areas and the blocked out areas are clearly defined. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This means that</span> for every different observation you need a custom mask<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Most current instruments require these masks to be prepared <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">well in advance of the observation and to be cut out of plastic. T<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">his<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> pro<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">cess </span></span></span></span></span>isn't feasible for a space telescope, but works very well on the ground. However, times are chang<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ing<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span></span>For example, for the <a href="http://irlab.astro.ucla.edu/mosfire/">MOSFIRE</a> <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">(Mul</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">t</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">i</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">-Object Spectrometer </a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.fr/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">for InfraRed Exploration)</a> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">instrument at the <a href="http://www.keckobservatory.org/">Keck Telescope</a>, the masks are created on the fly and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"bars" that create slits are then moved into the right position within the instrument. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Al<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">so for the upcoming </span></span></span><a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">Jame</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">s W</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">ebb Space Telescope</a> a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/jwst/overview/design/">MOS un</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.stsci.edu/jwst/overview/design/">it</a> will be availa<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ble. It is designed in such a way that little shutters open and close <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to</span> produce slits and masked out areas. </span></span></span></span></span>For many other instruments however, a mask is essentially one large piece of plastic that has lots of tiny slits cut out of it. The slits are placed exactly where you want to observe an object. To create such a mask is in principle relatively simple and I illustrate the process here with a series of images.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I recently created some MOS masks for the <a href="https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/instruments/gmos/">Gemini Multi Object Spectrograph (GMOS)</a> instrument at the <a href="http://www.gemini.edu/">Gemini Telescope</a> to observe CANDELS galaxies and will use one of the masks I created as an example here to illustrate the process. Firstly, an image of the desired piece of sky in which the positions of the objects you want to observe are measured (Figure 2) and a list of objects, i.e. a catalogue, are required. From that list we picked our desired targets. Often these are selected based on specific properties and limited by their brightness to ensure the maximum success with the granted observation time. Then we also need a list of stars to guide the telescope and to align the mask properly. Guide stars are used to correct for the rotation of the Earth throughout the observation so that the telescope is pointing at the same portion of the sky the entire time. You can see an example pointing in the first figure.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 3: Zoom in to show the placement of slits on some targets. Objects with blue triangles have highest priority, next are objects with green boxes, and then those with white circles. The yellow vertical stripes overlaid on an object show where the slit will be placed and cut out of the mask. The horizontal white lines mark the extension of the dispersed light, i.e. the spectrum of the object. Basically, all the light that hits the disperse<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r</span> when it comes through the vertically extended slit, is dispersed in the horizontal direction.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Alignment stars are included on the mask to make sure
all <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the</span> slits are on <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the selected</span> objects and not on some other piece of empty
sky when the telescope operators define the pointing of the telescope. Then we take this image and list of targets and run them through the provided software for the given instrument. Usually, the original list of targets leaves room for other objects to be placed on the mask as well, so we basically work with a prioritized list of objects. The highest priority objects are "forced" onto the mask into the space left after placements of the alignment stars to observe as many as possible of the desired targets. Then any available gaps are filled with objects of lower priority. In Figures 3 and 4 you can see all the slits that were placed on this particular mask and a zoom in that shows you a slit.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 4: The finished mask. The red outline is the field of view of the instrument, the blue vertical lines mark the gaps in the detector. Each rectangle box shows where the spectrum of that object will extend. Yellow vertical lines mark the position of the slit on the selected object. The cyan rectangle boxes mark the position of the alignment stars. </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After this, the observer can manually remove objects that received a slit if he/she wants the software to pick out a different object for example, one that might be more optimally placed. Then there are usually a few iterations in which the slit placement is refined a bit more and the maximum amount of objects are placed on the mask. And that's it, the mask is finished. All that is left to do is create all the masks for all the pointings in the same manner and then sending them off to the telescope and instrument support team for checking and approval. Once a mask is approved, all the necessary information is send to the mask cutting team who cut the mask, meaning all the tiny slits are cut out. After masks are cut, they will be installed in the instrument and then it's anxious waiting for us for the completion of your observations if they are carried out by the support astronomers at the observatory (Figure 5) or hoping for good weather if we go to the telescope ourselves to carry out the observations. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The CANDELS fields are currently <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">target</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-keck-telescopes-on-mauna-kea.html">ed by astronomers</a> all over the world with many observational prog<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rams <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">on</span> instruments such as<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="_5yl5"> <a href="http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/inst/deimos/">DEIMOS</a> (on the Keck Telescope), MOSFIRE (<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">on the Keck Telesco<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pe)</span></span>, GMOS (on the Gemini Telescope<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s, described in this post) and</span> <a href="http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/vimos.html">VIMOS</a> (at t<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he VL<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">T<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, for example with th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e VIMOS UltraDeep Survey</span>).</span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span> <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 5: Example observation from one of the GMOS masks. Each horizontal package of lines is the dispersed light from one slit. The bright vertical lines (a few are highlighted by the violet arrows) are emission lines caused by the night sky, meaning elements in our atmosphere emit light at certain wavelengths which are also detected and then overlap with the spectrum of the target object. The spectral traces of the target objects are highlighted by red arrows and are faint horizontal lines. In the red box, we can clearly see 2 bright dots, these are emission lines in the target object which we can use to determine its redshift and other properties. The green arrows point towards high energy cosmic rays that hit the detector and cause a detection. In order to retrieve the spectra for the target objects, astronomers have to remove the cosmic rays and subtract the spectrum of the night sky, so that ideally only the spectra of the real targets are left in the end.</span></td></tr>
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Janine Pforrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01420302849628597110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-30442488404848555872015-11-11T09:00:00.000-07:002015-11-11T09:00:11.528-07:00Astronomer of the Month: Amber Straughn<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Each
month we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an
interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This
month's Astronomer is <a href="http://www.amberstraughn.com/">Amber Straughn</a><span id="goog_1751247280"></span><span id="goog_1751247281"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>.</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tell us a little about yourself!</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hi!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m Amber
Straughn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I work at <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/">NASA’s</a> <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html">Goddard Space Flight Center</a> in Greenbelt, MD as a Civil Servant Scientist (my formal title is
“Research Astrophysicist”) and as the Deputy Project Scientist for <a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">James Webb Space Telescope</a> Science Communications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also on Goddard’s <a href="http://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/">WFIRST</a> science team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up in a tiny rural farming town in north-central
Arkansas (Bee Branch, to be specific, not that anyone ever knows where that
is!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got my B.S. in Physics at
<a href="http://physics.uark.edu/">University of Arkansas</a> (Go Razorbacks!) and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics at
<a href="http://sese.asu.edu/astrophysics">Arizona State University</a>, all the while focusing on astrophysics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did my first postdoc at Goddard through the
<a href="http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/">NASA Postdoctoral Program</a>, and was hired by NASA in 2011.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What is your specific area of research? What is your role within the CANDELS team? </span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I am broadly interested in galaxy evolution, and
specifically how galaxies gain their mass over time; as well as the interplay
between </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmic-collisions-galaxy-mergers-and.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">galaxy interactions</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, star formation, and </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supermassive-black-holes-and-active.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">supermassive black hole</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
growth. I’ve done work on both galaxy </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-do-we-measure-galaxy-morphology.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">morphologies</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and also looking at
emission-line galaxies using </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/candels-spectroscopy-infrared-grism.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HST grism spectra</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. I am an original co-I on the
CANDELS proposal, which was submitted back when I was a postdoc at Goddard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What made you want to become an astronomer? At what age did you know you were interested in astronomy? </span></b></span></div>
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I really have always known I wanted to be an astronomer. As I mentioned above, I grew up in an extremely rural part of the US. There wasn’t a lot to do in my hometown, but the night sky was -- and still is -- breathtaking. I was pulled in by the night sky from as early as I can remember. I would drag my family outside to watch <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-geminid-meteor-shower_13.html">meteor showers</a> and <a href="http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html">eclipses</a>, and I remember asking my parents ridiculous questions about how the Universe worked… I distinctly remember at one point when I was very young and asked my mom something that she didn’t know the answer to, that she told me: “I don’t know. But you can find out the answer yourself someday.” That gave me the initial motivation I needed to pursue this very privileged path of studying the Universe for a living.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What obstacles have you encountered on your path to becoming an astronomer and how did you overcome them? </span></b></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial";">Aside from the very real obstacles of getting
through the first year of grad school (and qualifying exams, and full loads of
classes and TA’ing, etc., that everyone goes through!), I would say that I’m
lucky to not have had any huge obstacles. I am, however, a first generation
college student. So that did present its own challenges. Coming from a small
town, with a tight-knit extended blue-collar family where nobody really
ventures too far from home, I did encounter some skepticism and negative
feedback from people close to me that didn’t understand what I wanted to do. It
was a weird thing to “leave”…leave your hometown, your family. But I’m grateful
that my immediate family -- especially my mom -- has always been extremely supportive
of me! And of course being a woman in a male-dominated field has at times been
challenging. I’m grateful that I’ve never experienced overt harassment or
discrimination, but as others have <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/why-there-are-still-far-too-few-women-in-stem/">more
eloquently elaborated on</a>…sometimes it’s the constant “small” things that
add up.</span><!--EndFragment-->
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who has been your biggest scientific role model and why? </span></b></span></div>
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">I’m very grateful for many
role models and mentors I’ve had along my career path. My undergrad academic
physics advisor at the University of Arkansas (Lin Oliver) was one of my
earliest and most influential mentors. He helped convince me that I could
succeed on this path very early on as a not-very-well prepared college student,
when I was sometimes worried about my capabilities (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome">imposter syndrome</a> is
real!). I’m happy to say that we’re still in contact!</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What is it like to be an astronomer? What is your favorite aspect? </span></b></span></div>
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<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial";">Is there anything better than doing something
you love as a career? It’s wonderful. In my current job at NASA, I do a lot of
work on future space missions that enable astronomy, and science communications
work, in addition to my own research. I mostly use Hubble data for my research.
And for me, Hubble’s always “been up there” (it was launched when I was in
elementary school). Working at Goddard, I get to <b>see</b> hardware for the
James Webb Space Telescope as it’s being developed, and there’s something
that’s so cool about that. </span><!--EndFragment--></div>
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<div>
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What motivates you in your research? </span></b></span></div>
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<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<br /></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">I think it’s generally just the drive to find
out something new, and to feel like I’ve contributed -- even if it’s only a tiny
bit -- to this grand endeavor of understanding our Universe.</span> </span></div>
<div>
<br />
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What is your favorite astronomical facility? </span></b></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial";">Well, that would have to be Hubble! I think it’s
amazing that not only has Hubble so profoundly changed the way we understand
the Universe, but it’s also completely captivated the imagination of the
public.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
<div>
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? </span></b></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Right now, I can’t imagine a
place I’d rather work than NASA. But maybe…astronaut? Who knows!</span><br />
<br />
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you could have any astronomy related wish, what would it be? </span></b></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial";">Sort of unrelated to actual astronomy research,
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "arial";">That our physical bodies are literally made of
exploded stars. There’s something so poetic about that…and it’s actually
literal fact. To get a bit more philosophical…I think it speaks to our
interconnectedness as human beings -- to each other, and to the cosmos itself! </span><!--EndFragment--><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGurULyrbiC8korI3HOTB2WimWRDsTYfZqoRgVwMGHneURaiVLd5nbIeFKAz3158nEgPsWlT1_JCtB-kBDvNQHIZ3knGRd7WO-9SaOR54G7K59OAMnBLx_rGaobkGAw7SO2F4MMdh0z0k/s1600/amber-outsideplane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGurULyrbiC8korI3HOTB2WimWRDsTYfZqoRgVwMGHneURaiVLd5nbIeFKAz3158nEgPsWlT1_JCtB-kBDvNQHIZ3knGRd7WO-9SaOR54G7K59OAMnBLx_rGaobkGAw7SO2F4MMdh0z0k/s400/amber-outsideplane.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial";">I think sometimes the
public, and/or kids who think about becoming scientists, think that scientists
are these super-intelligent socially-awkward genius loners who spend all their
time in the lab or “doing science”. And it’s not surprising that people think
that way…that’s often the way that scientists are portrayed in the media. But
the reality is that the vast majority of us are regular, everyday people (who
do have an aptitude for science and math, and certainly an increased interest
in it) -- people who have families, outside hobbies (I’m both a pilot and a
faithful yoga practitioner!), and hopes and dreams unrelated to science. Science
is a big part of our lives, to be sure, but feel free to talk to us…we’re a lot
like you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-12713524863607584942015-10-22T08:00:00.000-07:002015-10-22T14:22:15.336-07:00Exploring How Galaxies are Transformed<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYnmalH-lK01OzLgNGPtNXuJEfkPZZV7hl9K5ReiFdhwzCtieFOHjnULxNmGassLFtw_CuFtnf_dezN2qwRSWDZmA3WdR2Sw0x84rFjhHUJ0eUkIKRM42WTGw-oCC5ccc0KICeYv-m8k/s1600/Spiral-Galaxies-Larger-Than-Previously-Thought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYnmalH-lK01OzLgNGPtNXuJEfkPZZV7hl9K5ReiFdhwzCtieFOHjnULxNmGassLFtw_CuFtnf_dezN2qwRSWDZmA3WdR2Sw0x84rFjhHUJ0eUkIKRM42WTGw-oCC5ccc0KICeYv-m8k/s3000/Spiral-Galaxies-Larger-Than-Previously-Thought.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fig 1: Spiral galaxy M74. Image<br />Credit: NASA</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When we look at <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-types-of-galaxies-are-there.html">galaxies</a> out in the universe, we find that they come in many different types. Some galaxies have beautiful spiral structure (see Figure 1), while others look like irregular blobs of stars and gas. Still others look like featureless spheres of light (see Figure 2). These galaxies aren't <i>only</i> different in appearance, however. We find that we can separate galaxies into broad classes based not only on their shape (or <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-do-we-measure-galaxy-morphology.html">morphology</a>), but also on their stellar mass and how quickly they are forming stars (their <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-to-measure-star-formation-rates-of.html">star formation rate</a>, or SFR). We find that galaxies with disky morphologies, such as the spiral galaxies mentioned above, tend to be relatively star-forming compared to galaxies with more elliptical morphologies, which appear smooth, round, and featureless and are often no longer forming stars.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWpjZBF-j-7CJAB-kmmTLQp50R-OlqpQSrEqXXEJM1uEw33akohYrne5YseEl9jipkUz1NDD-L4qZaN5ZeUckhBrXOMLWiyyAqa7rK0tNMiPzRyxT2iOL3LCXBJEYhERvR-TzwvYsn-8I/s1600/Abell_S740%252C_cropped_to_ESO_325-G004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWpjZBF-j-7CJAB-kmmTLQp50R-OlqpQSrEqXXEJM1uEw33akohYrne5YseEl9jipkUz1NDD-L4qZaN5ZeUckhBrXOMLWiyyAqa7rK0tNMiPzRyxT2iOL3LCXBJEYhERvR-TzwvYsn-8I/s3000/Abell_S740%252C_cropped_to_ESO_325-G004.jpg" width="186" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fig 2: Elliptical galaxy ESO 325-<br />G004. Image Credit: NASA</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Since morphology and star formation rate often appear to be correlated in this way, it has been suggested by many that perhaps the processes responsible for shutting off star formation in galaxies are also associated with the formation of an elliptical component, called a "bulge." One such process for shutting off star formation is AGN feedback, which is the name for when a <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supermassive-black-holes-and-active.html">supermassive black hole</a> at the center of a galaxy affects the galaxy around it. When a supermassive black hole accretes material, large amounts of energy are released from the regions near the black hole, which can then heat up or drive out gas from the surrounding galaxy by launching winds or relativistic jets of plasma. The gas that is driven out or heated up is then no longer available to form stars, so the galaxy becomes "quiescent," which is the term we use for galaxies which have stopped forming stars.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fig 3: Artist's rendition of a galaxy with <br />AGN-driven outflows. Image Credit: <br />ESA/ATG medialab</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So how does the morphology of the galaxy change, and what triggers the AGN feedback? Here we rely on <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmic-collisions-galaxy-mergers-and.html">galaxy mergers</a> and disk instabilities to drive material toward the center of a galaxy in order to both build a bulge component and feed the central supermassive black hole. During a galaxy merger, gas will be driven toward the center of the merger remnant, whereas a disk instability will lead to material being moved to the center of an isolated disk galaxy. In either case, the result is a galaxy with a significant bulge component that is no longer forming stars.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fig 4: Galaxies in three different <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshift</a> bins being</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In order to test these ideas, we implemented a merger and disk instability-based AGN feedback prescription in our <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-theory-meets-observations.html">semi-analytic model</a> (SAM) of galaxy formation and evolution in order to see how well we could reproduce the fraction of galaxies that are star-forming and disk-dominated (SFD) or quiescent and spheroid-dominated (QS) as compared with data from the CANDELS survey (as well as a local sample of galaxies from the GAMA survey). SAMs are a type of simulation which model large numbers of galaxies over the history of the universe. Our SAM evolves a cosmological sample of galaxies forward in time with relatively simple prescriptions for physical processes like the hierarchical growth of structure formation due to the merging of dark matter halos, the heating and cooling of gas, star formation, stellar evolution, <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supernovae.html">supernovae</a>, chemical enrichment of galactic and intergalactic gas, AGN feedback, and starbursts and morphological transformation due to galaxy mergers and disk instabilities. We </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">divided galaxies based on their specific star formation rates (star formation rate divided by stellar mass) and their Sersic index, which is a measure of morphology. A Sersic index of 1 indicates a pure disk, while a Sersic index of 4 indicates a pure bulge. The distribution of galaxies in this plane, as well as our dividing lines for a few of our <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshift</a> bins, can be seen in Figure 4. By focusing on this plane, we also found ourselves studying the more "outlying populations": star-forming and spheroid-dominated (SFS) and quiescent and disk-dominated (QD). These populations are more rare but must still be explained by our evolutionary models.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fig 5: The fraction of galaxies in each of the four populations.<br />The solid black line represents the observations, while the dashed<br />red line represents our primary model which includes AGN feedback<br />and bulge formation triggered by both mergers and disk instabilities.<br />The dotted blue line represents our model which only includes mergers.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In Figure 5, we can see the evolution of the fraction of galaxies in each of these four populations for both our model and the observations. Our model, which includes disk instabilities as a driver of bulge formation and AGN feedback, reproduces the fraction of SFDs and QSs much better than our model with a merger-only picture. Meanwhile, we reproduce the rough fractions of SFSs and QDs, although we do not quite match how the fractions evolve.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Our model suggests that SFDs are galaxies which have had very quiet histories; they've avoided major mergers and if they have ever been disturbed, they were able to accrete new gas and continue forming stars. QSs, on the other hand, are very likely to have undergone at least one major merger, or perhaps very many minor mergers, which built up a large bulge component and triggered AGN feedback, eventually leading to the cessation of star formation. SFSs in our model are a very short-lived population, the result of a recent merger which has led to bulge formation and a post-trauma starburst. These are likely soon to experience AGN feedback which will transform them into QSs. Finally, QDs are the result of SFDs which have stopped accreting new gas (perhaps due to environmental effects) or are very large and extended, causing their gas not to be dense enough to form stars.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While we do not match the evolution of these populations exactly, it seems we are beginning to be able to capture the very complicated processes responsible for the diverse galaxy population we see all around us.</span></span></div>
Ryan Brennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452046745398140174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-75664699569743565632015-10-02T08:00:00.000-07:002015-10-02T08:00:07.468-07:00Astronomer of the Month: Tim Hamilton<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each month we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This month's Astronomer is <a href="https://www.ssucet.org/~thamilton/Welcome.html">Tim Hamilton</a>.</span></span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2RH5xD1yvWiIBDUiCy75md9zbha37jLKJQ3z7w3UZMQvOebaYX51d82c3_n5Bdd2l0ynt0rOM7OdzqEUDdkmRNnlwNJO7nTedR45Bcy4XBuqHF_2E79vecuHkrP0C_De23U-YRF-n1A/s1600/Tim+profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2RH5xD1yvWiIBDUiCy75md9zbha37jLKJQ3z7w3UZMQvOebaYX51d82c3_n5Bdd2l0ynt0rOM7OdzqEUDdkmRNnlwNJO7nTedR45Bcy4XBuqHF_2E79vecuHkrP0C_De23U-YRF-n1A/s320/Tim+profile.jpg" width="203" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm Tim Hamilton, a professor at Ohio's <a href="http://www.shawnee.edu/">Shawnee State University</a>. In addition to my </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">research, I teach physics and astronomy, and I run the university's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shawnee_State_University&redirect=no#Clyde_W._Clark_Planetarium">Clyde W. Clark Planetarium</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm a hillbilly from the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, where I grew up on a small farm (mostly forest, actually) bordering the national park. We have a wonderful view of the skies from the pasture, where we'd sometimes take a blanket and a thermos of hot chocolate and lie out to watch the stars. It's dark enough there to see even some </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globular_cluster" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">globular clusters</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (a kind of star cluster) with the naked eye, and the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Milky Way</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> really stands out well. That was probably what made me interested in astronomy, although I never became much of an "amateur astronomer" -- no telescopes or astrophotography as a kid. I went to </span><a href="http://www.rhodes.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rhodes College</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, where I majored in physics. At the time, our program there was geared towards astronomy. Almost all of the physics professors were astronomers, and that gave me my big push into the subject. I went on to the </span><a href="http://www.pitt.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">University of Pittsburgh</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> for my doctorate - -a big change in moving from a tiny college to a big, urban campus. And I did much of my graduate research at the </span><a href="http://www.stsci.edu/portal/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Space Telescope Science Institute</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, which operates the </span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hubble Space Telescope</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. After graduation, I worked at </span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NASA</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> for two years and then started my current job. I met my wife at a </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supermassive-black-holes-and-active.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black hole</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> conference about that time, and we were lucky that after we married, we were able to get jobs in similar fields within a reasonable commuting distance of each other. I know some couples who have to live states or even countries away for a few years at a time, and that's rough. As it is, we live close to the college where she teaches, and I have an hour's drive to work, following the Ohio River valley the entire way. It's a beautiful and relaxing commute, and I usually take my camera.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several different areas I work on in astronomy. First, I've made a specialty of looking at the galaxies that have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar">quasars</a> in them. The bright glare from the quasar in the galaxy's center poses a real challenge in seeing the fainter galaxy around it, so I've developed ways of erasing that glare from the pictures. Lately, I've branched out into other kinds of galaxies, but I especially enjoy what we call "<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supermassive-black-holes-and-active.html">active galaxies</a>," like quasars, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyfert_galaxy">Seyferts</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_galaxy">radio galaxies</a>. On the side, I do a bit of work with "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet">exoplanets</a>" -- planets around other stars. I'm part of the <a href="http://panoptes.github.io/">PANOPTES</a> project, which uses a network of hobbyist digital cameras to find these. We've got a Canon EOS Rebel with an 85 mm lens mounted on a tripod that tracks the motion of the sky, and we take a series of pictures at night. If an exoplanet eclipses its star, then the star will dim for a few hours, and we can see that in the photos. Ultimately, we want to make this into a global project that will include amateur astronomers, colleges, and even high school students.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within CANDELS, I'm making simulations of that glare pattern I mentioned earlier. Whether the glare is from a quasar or a star, the pattern will be the same. By making a simulation -- a model of it -- we can either remove the glare from the picture (showing us what else is around that area), or we can measure just how bright the star or quasar is. That can tell us how massive it is and how much energy it puts out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Math is my weakest point, academically (I'm actually best at history and foreign language). I'd actually wandered off into particle physics for a couple of years at the beginning of grad school, but I wasn't doing that well in calculating the reactions. So I switched back into astronomy and found my niche. I'm much better at visual things, and analyzing images -- pictures -- is a satisfying piece of work. I'm using plenty of math, of course, but it helps now that I'm applying it to a purpose I understand better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't have a real role model in science. But I enjoy the biographies and anecdotes of scientists; they humanize the work. The one I've enjoyed the most -- maybe the closest one to a role model -- is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman">Richard Feynman</a>, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965. But it isn't so much his research; it was reading his memoirs, <i>Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!</i>, that inspired me. He was simply interesting and funny. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My institution is is mostly for teaching undergraduates, so research has to be fit into a full lecturing schedule. My enthusiasm for keeping active in astronomy is partly a matter of wanting to succeed personally (ego can be a wonderful motivator when you're not paid for research!) and partly the desire to find out how the universe works. You can get so bogged down in the weeds in a research project -- spending days trying to make software work, or figure out the best way to clean up a picture -- that it's important to keep a perspective on your work and remember where it fits into the big picture. What bigger questions is your research going to answer, and what will that lead to?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contrary to how astronomers are usually pictured, I spend very little time at a telescope. Much to my great disappointment. Actually, the only telescope I get to use in person is the 8" one I have on campus for the students. See, about the time I was in grad school, the biggest observatories stopped having you come out to the telescope and take the observations yourself. So instead of you needing to fly out to, say, Hawaii(!) for four days, they'd just take the pictures for you and email you the results. Nuts. Now, the smaller telescopes still do have people go there in person, but for my quasar work, those just can't get the sharp picture I need. Really, though, almost all of my work has been with the Hubble, and since it's in space, I wouldn't get to travel there, anyway. Now, once I have my galaxy pictures, I work on my laptop to analyze them. A MacBook has everything I need to do the work, so I can sit out on my deck at home and do the research without having to be stuck in my college office, staring at the concrete block wall. It makes up a little for the lack of observatory travel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since I haven't traveled to observatories, my favorite astronomical facility is the Space Telescope Science Institute, since I did most of my graduate research there. They operate the Hubble Space Telescope now, and when its successor is launched (the <a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">James Webb Space Telescope</a>), they will run it, too. In the meantime, they also maintain an enormous archive of images not only from the Hubble but from several other space observatories. Having an archive of digital images changes how some of us do astronomy. The fact that they're all digital means they can be immediately put on a computer and analyzed. (Until about the 1980s, you'd have to scan in the glass plate negatives.) And by keeping all of the old pictures available, you have free access to everything the Hubble has ever looked at. Nobody exhausts all that can be done with the original pictures, and later scientists find lots of new things to discover in them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I plan to make my career where I am, at Shawnee State. It's not a research-heavy institution, but I'm tenured and the most senior physics professor there, and that gives me the job stability that I want. I attend conferences often enough to stay in the loop. Some research-only people wind up moving every few years, and I wouldn't like that. I also enjoy teaching (grading is another matter), and I'd miss that if I went back to Space Telescope or NASA. But I do hope to make some bigger discoveries at some point, and if a Nobel prize is out of my reach, I'd settle for publishing a paper that lots of people cited.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, while I've avoided writing this up in the question-and-answer style, there are a couple or three questions they have for me that I just can't fit into a narrative, so let me put them here:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYK_B_XvJOXn1oM4_efTMToeQpwhkfwFe1oRaK4-3IdwOs6MdEiMbJFbJ0mTJ7JDe5fwaIfw0TBFUNIV7XlNyHphR158XNpTshwRf2wJRMgCiPxEs3YKaGCSC4ACkXlzEij8hJS3pW1w/s1600/Tim+in+a+cave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYK_B_XvJOXn1oM4_efTMToeQpwhkfwFe1oRaK4-3IdwOs6MdEiMbJFbJ0mTJ7JDe5fwaIfw0TBFUNIV7XlNyHphR158XNpTshwRf2wJRMgCiPxEs3YKaGCSC4ACkXlzEij8hJS3pW1w/s320/Tim+in+a+cave.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I could have any astronomy-related wish, what would it be? I'm going to stretch the bounds of "astronomy" a bit here. I would wish to be an astronaut. I don't even want to do that to see the stars better or anything else that ties in with my interests in astronomy. I just want to fly a rocket into space. That would be the biggest thrill I can imagine. I went to Space Camp in high school, I read <i>The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual</i>, and I built model rockets. If you haven't seen them already, watch the movies <i>The Right Stuff</i> and <i>Apollo 13</i>. Despite the disasters and near-disasters you see in our early space program, those just made me want to be an astronaut even more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is my favorite, most mind-boggling astronomy fact? That might be the slowing of timed down to a stop, as something falls into a black hole. From the view of someone outside the black hole, nothing has ever fallen completely into it! Maybe. See, how would the black hole form in the first place, if that were true? That's actually my wife's field, and there's thinking that the black hole's event horizon is more complicated than that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What else would I like the public to know about astronomy? Astronomy might be the area of physics that uses the broadest range of knowledge. Any area of physics you can think of can probably be applied to astronomy in some way, and this makes it useful to talk to people in different fields. Astronomy is like the liberal arts of physics, all in itself. On top of the physicists, there are artists who paint renditions of our discoveries, chemists who study the molecules in nebulae, and there are even biologists who work out what kind of life could survive on different planets. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OK, I'd like people to know that and one other thing: There are lots -- LOTS -- of astronomers who are rock climbers. I don't know why. I was at a wedding of two astronomers, and the groomsmen all went climbing the morning of the ceremony. This was not considered unusual. I've got a colleague across the hall who works on stars and has written an instruction book on climbing, and I've got another friend who does mission planning for the New Horizons space probe and has written a guide book on climbing. And then there are just a bunch of others who climb without writing books about it, a correlation that has gone back several decades. If anyone can come up with a theory that explains the connection, I'll be interested.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-53500753375287990292015-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:002015-09-23T08:00:02.575-07:00CANDELS Detects First Light Galaxies<div dir="ltr">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>This is a guest post by <a href="http://herschel.uci.edu/ketron/">Ketron Mitchell-Wayne</a>, graduate student at the <a href="http://uci.edu/">University of California-Irvine</a>. He and other CANDELS team member recently published a paper in <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150907/ncomms8945/full/ncomms8945.html">Nature</a>. This paper was the subject of a recent <a href="http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/parsing-photons-in-the-infrared-uci-led-astronomers-uncover-signs-of-earliest-galaxies/">press release</a>. Here, Ketron describes the project and the role that he played.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cosmic <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/candels-and-the-ebl.html">extragalactic background light</a> is a product of many different
component emissions throughout all cosmic times. Recent CANDELS
observations have opened up a new window of opportunity for measuring
this cosmic background light at optical and near infrared wavelengths.
We have assembled Hubble frames taken over a 10 year period and mosaiced them to produce some of the deepest images suitable for such a study.
With the mosaics, we can study this diffuse, clumpy light that resides
behind all the resolved stars and galaxies in the mosaics. With
statistics, we have attributed a fraction of this diffuse background to
the first light galaxies during reionization. Here's a short summary of
the work that I did, over the course of two years, in order to make
these very interesting measurements.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My main job for this paper was generating the
mosaics and making the statistical measurements. I started working on
the data reduction in the summer of 2013 and have spent the better part
of the last two years working on the project. <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~koekemoe/">Anton Koekemoer</a> had a data
reduction pipeline set up for all the incoming CANDELS data, but I
wanted to incorporate archival data in our analysis too. So I had a
number of reduction steps to complete on thousands of frames, even
before making the mosaics (which is in itself very difficult).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once
we had mosaics in multiple bands (left panel of Figure 1), I generated a source mask. We want to
isolate the </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">background light signal, so foreground stars and galaxies
need to be removed from the image. The dark areas in the second panel of
Figure 1 is the source mask (just zeros in the array).</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO663tHNlmGgIJzKwJCSfL-5zzbtN99mMY0KYw-TMRT2a_mcML7JHSgregx8L4nv3MIXfIg90xfDxY6U9obaKUYrsZxuCOavlqzvTWLQ9xBA9_dtKHq1rREagRhu536o19yITB0ABt5vg/s1600/press_fig1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO663tHNlmGgIJzKwJCSfL-5zzbtN99mMY0KYw-TMRT2a_mcML7JHSgregx8L4nv3MIXfIg90xfDxY6U9obaKUYrsZxuCOavlqzvTWLQ9xBA9_dtKHq1rREagRhu536o19yITB0ABt5vg/s640/press_fig1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Figure 1: These three panels show different components of near-infrared background light. The one on the left is a mosaic of images taken, the one in the middle shows the intrahalo light seen when masking out all the stars and galaxies, and the one on the right shows the signature of the first galaxies. Credit: Ketron Mitchell-Wynne / UCI</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At
this point I could start making statistical measurements of the
<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/candels-and-the-ebl.html">background light</a> in the mosaiced, source-subtracted maps. The methods we
used aren't new, but much of the dataset was. We used a very similar
method to what was used in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background">Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)</a>
studies. We look at "empty pixels" (what's left over after source
removal) and measure whether or not some group of pixels in one part of
the image is correlated with another group of pixels in a different part
of the image. This is the angular power spectrum, which quantifies
these correlations, as a function of angular scale. This is exactly what
the CMB team did to measure the microwave background power spectrum,
which is paramount in our understanding of cosmology. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiflin5R3M0BZqYX4zw-1DJ8lO0Fx8-g8j7aeahQDk2hs2mlrC7S3YLMFaQzYTpANneYudDzwmC3trDV2SE8aEBmjjtW8JgNFycZxZEz0XavclMlhM8-nhfj9mOp0DlEGw56ORKX-aYQ/s1600/press_fig2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiflin5R3M0BZqYX4zw-1DJ8lO0Fx8-g8j7aeahQDk2hs2mlrC7S3YLMFaQzYTpANneYudDzwmC3trDV2SE8aEBmjjtW8JgNFycZxZEz0XavclMlhM8-nhfj9mOp0DlEGw56ORKX-aYQ/s400/press_fig2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Figure 2: The brightness of the near-infrared background light as a function<br />of wavelength. Our new Hubble measurements are highlighted in orange. <br />The components from the "intrahalo light" (shown above in middle panel) <br />and the first light galaxies (right panel above) are shown as the blue <br />and red line, respectively.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I
made maps in five different wavelength ranges, or "bands": 0.6, 0.7,
0.85, 1.25 and 1.6 microns. The shortest band is in the yellow range of
visible light, and the longest two are in the <a href="http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html">near-infrared (NIR)</a>, which
our eyes aren't sensitive to. This wavelength range (1 micron) is
special because it is sensitive to <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/09/in-search-of-first-galaxies.html">Lyman break signatures</a> with a
multi-wavelength study, and it is the wavelength at which we expect a
signal from the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-clearing-of-cosmic-fog-and-end-of.html">reionization epoch</a>. Figure 2 shows the brightness of the
background light in each of these bands. Each of the bands has a common
component - what we call "<a href="http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/article00679.html">intrahalo light</a>" - which is the light emitted
by stars which have been tidally stripped from their host galaxies via
<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmic-collisions-galaxy-mergers-and.html">mergers or interactions</a>. But in Figure 2 you can see that the brightness drops
significantly from the two NIR bands to the shorter bands. We think this
is because the NIR bands are picking up, in addition to intrahalo
light, a high-redshift signal from the first light galaxies. Because the
photons from the reionization era have been <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshifted</a> by a factor of
about 10, we expect their signal to peak between 0.9 and 1.1 microns,
with no shortward contribution below the Lyman break at about 0.8
microns.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're studying the background light,
which traces emission from many different kinds of sources over all
cosmological times. So we don't have a direct image of only the first
galaxies. With sophisticated modeling, we were able to separate the
different component emissions, and isolate the signal from the first
galaxies. So what we have, via statistical methods, is a description of
the astrophysical environment 500 million years after the big bang. The
third panel in Fig 1 is a reconstruction of what they would look like
based on our statistical measurements. Cosmological theory suggests that
these first light galaxies are the progenitors to our milky way, and
all other evolved galaxies.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-70167786591189977072015-09-09T08:00:00.000-07:002015-09-09T08:00:03.138-07:00Astronomer of the Month: Brett Salmon<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each month we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This month's Astronomer is <a href="http://people.physics.tamu.edu/bsalmon/">Brett Salmon</a>.</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tell us a little about yourself!</span></b></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKu14ZmGFldaU1CAKHrY7AaD6RFdFJWZrpXbtzvFR0Q8hmOoGP5j1_gLfVC9iFQbUy4Q3fy4JTwQ4gsYp1IkJs5KXf4SIXKVNgXxC-ovb9x9NykiCOR9IDymFDAlW2uS8PdyJweOu-18/s1600/Salmon_profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKu14ZmGFldaU1CAKHrY7AaD6RFdFJWZrpXbtzvFR0Q8hmOoGP5j1_gLfVC9iFQbUy4Q3fy4JTwQ4gsYp1IkJs5KXf4SIXKVNgXxC-ovb9x9NykiCOR9IDymFDAlW2uS8PdyJweOu-18/s400/Salmon_profile.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hi! My name is Brett Salmon and I’m a finishing graduate student at </span><a href="https://physics.tamu.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Texas A&M University</a><span id="goog_1464577004" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span id="goog_1464577005" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. I was born and raised in New Jersey and I am primarily from Washington Township, just outside of Philadelphia. I received my Bachelors degree in </span><a href="https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ast/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Astronomy</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> from </span><a href="http://www.rutgers.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rutgers University</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in 2010. While at Rutgers I ran for the varsity cross country team, where my fastest 8 km race was 26 and a half minutes. I originally intended on taking a year after undergrad to build my research experience, but applied to Texas A&M on a whim. The program looked great so I decided to go, and I’ve been here for 5 years. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your specific area of research? What is your role within the CANDELS team? </span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am a junior scientist member of the CANDELS team, and have been a part of the </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/search/label/High%20Redshift" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">high redshift</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">phot-z</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> working groups. I’ve also been involved in several CANDELS projects on the evolution of distant galaxies. Specifically, I study the physical properties of galaxies in the early universe, including their star-formation rates, stellar masses, star-formation histories, nebular emission, and dust. For the most distant galaxies these features cannot be observed directly, so a chunk of my work involves developing statistical techniques to infer galaxy properties from broadband photometric data, and the limitations of those techniques. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What made you want to become an astronomer? At what age did you know you were interested in astronomy? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like most astronomers, I was hooked at a young age. I recall my mom getting a small (refracting!) telescope when I was about 6. The night sky flourished above our rural home, and our wonder instilled a passion for astronomy. I knew I wanted to learn about the cosmos. However, to be fair, I was 6 and also wanted to be a policeman, fireman, <i>and</i> astronaut. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What obstacles have you encountered on your path to becoming an astronomer and how did you overcome them? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Physics GRE knocked me down. I should have prepared differently and my resulting poor score nearly scared me away from an astro-track. Thankfully, support from professors Andrew Baker and Chuck Keeton at Rutgers reassured me that such standardized tests aren’t reflective of success in the field of astronomy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Who has been your biggest scientific role model and why? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mentors and advisors I’ve had in undergrad and grad school (</span><a href="http://people.physics.tamu.edu/papovich/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Casey Papovich</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) have certainly been influential in shaping my career as a scientist. As far as role models, I’ve always admired those that can purvey complicated scientific phenomena in a way that is fun and understandable to the public, like </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Carl Sagan</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, </span><a href="http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Neil deGrasse Tyson</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and </span><a href="http://mkaku.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michio Kaku</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is it like to be an astronomer? What is your favorite aspect? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is hard to distinguish between two changes in my life that happened during the early years of grad school: learning how to think like a scientist, and working like an astronomer. The former is an idea that has broad impact; ideas and concepts are validated (or refuted) through evidence, not artful rhetoric. I think this scientific mindset takes time and experience to fully appreciate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second change involved learning what daily work in astronomy is really like. I learned that each day is like a crash course in learning new programming, statistics, or data visualization techniques. Every day is different. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My favorite aspect of astronomy is that it is, at heart, an observational science. Physics, math, and computer science are valuable subjects themselves, but in astronomy they become tools invoked to explain a particular phenomena. Although astronomers draw from multiple disciplines, they do so to figure out how and why a galaxy exploded 10 billion years ago. It feels grounded in context. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What motivates you in your research? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m motivated by that nagging feeling of wanting to see the answer to a puzzle you’ve been working on for 5 years. There are rarely finite results thanks to the incremental nature of science. As a result, that itch to figure out what’s going on in the data never really goes away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite astronomical facility? (This could include telescopes or super computers, for example) </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any telescope on </span><a href="https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/mko/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mauna Kea</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, Hawaii. I had the pleasure to do some observing at the summit at </span><a href="http://www.gemini.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gemini Observatory</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, and the experience was surreal. The clouds illuminated beautiful sunsets and sunrises, which was bittersweet since it also meant poor weather for observations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the immediate future I am applying for postdoc positions. I have a passion for astronomy as well as outreach and teaching, so we’ll see where that takes me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you could have any astronomy related wish, what would it be? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A realistic wish: more funding and public support. A supernatural hypothetical wish: I’d like to see a really bright supernovae go off in the Milky Way (aren’t we due for one?).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite, most mind-boggling astronomy fact? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are more stars in our Milky Way galaxy like the Sun, than there are people on Earth that have ever lived. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is there anything else you would like for the public to know about you or astronomy in general? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to get into astronomy professionally one day, take computer science and statistics courses. Most, if not all, undergrad curriculum for physics/astronomy does not include these courses, yet I use statistics and programming on a daily basis. Thanks for reading!</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-59862155564767478622014-04-28T08:00:00.000-07:002014-04-28T10:52:36.183-07:00BICEP2: Pinning Down Cosmic Inflation<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Last month, the scientific collaboration
working with the <a href="http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/bicep2/bicep2_front.htm">BICEP2</a> telescope in Antarctica (Background Imaging of Cosmic
Extragalactic Polarization) published a surprising first result: after three
years of deep microwave imaging of 6% of the sky, they may have
found the smoking gun* of the <a href="http://www.ctc.cam.ac.uk/outreach/origins/inflation_zero.php">theory of inflation</a>. That smoking gun consists of
a series of ripples or fluctuations of the microwave polarization in this part
of the sky. These ripples signify that within the first trillionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of second, the universe underwent a rapid,
exponential spatial inflation, making its temperature and density nearly
homogenous, corresponding to the large-scale density-uniformity of our own
observable universe today. Because the universe started out on such a small
spatial scale before inflation, quantum alternations in the fabric of spacetime
were present. As the universe rapidly inflated in this </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-32</sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> second of time,
those alterations were magnified and manifested themselves as large-scale
gravitational waves. These gravitational waves made their imprint in the cosmic
microwave background, that image of the hot early universe we see today, in
that same background’s polarization information. (Just like ordinary polarized
light you can see by turning your head 90 degrees while wearing polarized
glasses, radio waves, including microwave radio emission from the early
universe, can be polarized in perpendicular directions.) As a result of this
imprint, there are patches of sky in which the CMB’s polarization goes one way,
and other patches in which the polarization goes the other way:</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjuC9-vV8pHjkxHg387lyIGv94FhLlTSPqF-RxXEoBDDMrABvDFXvqopLa_EJw9cAaJnO5zqQBA3r9sIiGeyUcmGU4VJ5_fnMPEtGfMnnuCCO3-WylI1Zc8yI1ClyuFzV3vWBfWv6abk9/s1600/bicep2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjuC9-vV8pHjkxHg387lyIGv94FhLlTSPqF-RxXEoBDDMrABvDFXvqopLa_EJw9cAaJnO5zqQBA3r9sIiGeyUcmGU4VJ5_fnMPEtGfMnnuCCO3-WylI1Zc8yI1ClyuFzV3vWBfWv6abk9/s1600/bicep2.png" height="339" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fluctuations in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background observed with the BICEP2 telescope. The high and low ripples (orange and blue) indicate a signature of gravitational waves from the era of inflation.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">...the
orange areas corresponding to one direction of polarization and the blue areas
corresponding to another direction of polarization. The width and number of the
orange and blue blobs is where the inflationary theory (conceived in the 1980s
by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Guth">Guth</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Linde">Linde</a> and others) comes in. That theory predicts that if inflation
happened and if it produced large-scale gravitational waves, the number of
widths of the blobs should be such-and-such. Now take a look at the next image:</span></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-lOKstKDXj9HQdBxZLJjatTMW9V2fWjnCe69vUoUwowZh7mdYYdjLJ-LGkTFNq63ezz9k3JNd7ePlYoAGW3hrh7YDiWc5Fmejhm7itNNAXS2fV-J1eQNbCHZiNKbrjoLyabRX5_A3hIf6/s1600/bicep2powerspec2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-lOKstKDXj9HQdBxZLJjatTMW9V2fWjnCe69vUoUwowZh7mdYYdjLJ-LGkTFNq63ezz9k3JNd7ePlYoAGW3hrh7YDiWc5Fmejhm7itNNAXS2fV-J1eQNbCHZiNKbrjoLyabRX5_A3hIf6/s1600/bicep2powerspec2.png" height="292" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Detailed analysis of the above fluctuation image. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The number and size of the blue and orange peaks and troughs </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">matches theoretical predictions closely.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">...now,
this image is fairly complicated and was of course given for the target
audience of professional cosmologists. What it essentially means, though, is that
the number and widths of blue and orange blobs (the black data points with error
plusses overlaid) exactly corresponds to the predictions of the theory of
inflation (the red curve which they follow).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is really big news, and could
potentially lead to a Nobel Prize. Of course, the result will be followed up
with observations from other telescopes, and will probably take years to verify
solidly. However, the results are so far looking incredibly good.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I’ve packed a lot into what I have said so
far. Let me try to break it down a bit more, and to point out the relationship
of this discovery to the research field of galaxy evolution, which we normally
discuss in this blog.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">First, what motivated the theory of
inflation? A number of things, but most importantly it was the horizon problem.
The CMB, even when <a href="http://www.bell-labs.com/project/feature/archives/cosmology/">first discovered in 1964 by Penzias and Wilson </a>(later earning
them the Nobel Prize), immediately showed itself as a strangely uniform
microwave glow throughout the sky. Because of the CMB’s origin in the early
universe, just 3% of the universe’s age after the Big Bang, such a strange uniformity
was extremely surprising.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I say “strange uniformity” for the following reason. The CMB’s
overall uniformity (i.e., it is as bright when looking up from the north pole as
it is when looking up from Antarctica) means that the early universe, 14
billion years ago, was the same temperature in one faraway volume of space as
the other faraway volume of space. But the light-travel time from one side of
the universe to the other is much longer than the age of the universe itself! (This conundrum is also called the "horizon problem".)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I cook scrambled eggs, I have a
passionate dislike for the brown, flaky parts that accumulate at the bottom of
the frying pan. And so I am an obsessive stirrer. And why do we stir scrambled
eggs? Because bringing the hotter parts in contact with the cooler parts
equilibrates the temperature everywhere. The hot spots down by the hot frying
pan won’t get brown. The fact that the early universe was the same temperature
in vastly different parts of the universe means that something must have moved
faster than light in order to bring the distant parts of the observable
universe into contact with one another. Now we know from special relativity
that no information can propagate faster than light. But that fact doesn’t
prevent space itself from expanding faster than light. In other words, in very,
very, very early times, space itself, i.e., the distance between things, would
have stretched out at a rate faster than the speed of light. Thus, by a superluminal
stretching, the entire observable universe would have been in causal contact
with itself (just like stirred eggs) long before the hot-plasma era of the
early universe we see in the CMB.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What would cause such a rapid inflation?
An increase in spatial scale by </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">26</sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> in </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-32</sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> seconds (as the theory states)
is not reminiscent of any energy source known to us. There is a wealth of
theoretical literature on the topic, but the short answer is: we don’t know,
but it must have been something. (The best guess is that the mechanism would be something called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflaton">scalar fields</a>.) Although there are deep reasons in particle
physics to look for such forces, doesn’t this sound strangely like magic at the
end of the day?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But when the phenomenon known as dark
energy was discovered in 1997 by CANDELS team member <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~ariess/">Adam Riess</a> and
collaborators, earning them the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, the theory of
inflation sounded less like theoretical speculation and more like reality.
The discovery, as can be read about in <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/04/candels-finds-most-distant-type-ia.html">other CANDELS blog posts</a>, showed that the
universe in its more recent cosmological history (i.e., the space we see at
around a redshift of 1) began accelerating in its expansion. It was certainly a
far more gradual acceleration than the rapid inflation at </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-32</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> seconds, but
nonetheless it was an inflation of sorts.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX9kmj_rdNRhxMhgNM1l-uLc-ky9FQ8o1GCdQgVqxuHHB2Dr_BuZbyC-5oh_bWfnXc6jGvW1LCAWTriCakJpCpu2JE5pncWK8JeaEwqCGsiX5tgOE4sqjsYdJLBf9jAImZJfFsDz18Fndk/s1600/Dark+Sector+Lab__BICEP2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX9kmj_rdNRhxMhgNM1l-uLc-ky9FQ8o1GCdQgVqxuHHB2Dr_BuZbyC-5oh_bWfnXc6jGvW1LCAWTriCakJpCpu2JE5pncWK8JeaEwqCGsiX5tgOE4sqjsYdJLBf9jAImZJfFsDz18Fndk/s1600/Dark+Sector+Lab__BICEP2.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The BICEP2 facility, located at the South Pole.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The discovery of dark energy gave further
impetus to search for the predicted polarization pattern in the CMB that would
confirm inflationary theory. Now that a surprisingly strong polarization signal
has been found (combining the </span></span><a href="http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/bicep2/bicep2_front.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BICEP2</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> data with data from the Planck mission), a path of independent confirmations lies ahead. The Planck space mission will
confirm the result on larger spatial scales. Other ground-based telescopes such
as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Telescope">SPT</a> and the <a href="http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/CMB/keckarray/">Keck Array</a> (the expanded </span></span><a href="http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/bicep2/bicep2_front.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BICEP2</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">) will probe more deeply. They will verify that
the polarization pattern is due to sources in the early universe and not
something nearby – foreground galaxies, or even <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.1899">something in the vicinity of our own galaxy</a>. Finally, the presence of gravitational waves in the early
universe gives a bright green light for observations of <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/10/galaxy-evolution-and-gravitational-waves.html">gravitational waves passing the vicinity of the earth today</a>: through <a href="http://nanograv.org/">pulsar timing</a> (which, <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/11/galaxy-evolution-and-gravitation-waves.html">as discussed in previous posts</a>, has significant implications for galaxy evolution
models), <a href="http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a>, and the space-based eLISA mission. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although I have not spoken much of galaxy
evolution, suffice it to remember that had not the early universe inflated and
laid the groundwork in which galaxy clusters, galaxies, stars, planets, and you
and me would come to be, then I would not be able to write on this galaxy
evolution blog about all that has happened in our universe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*I
don’t really like to use the term “smoking gun” in relation to scientific
discoveries, because it usually takes a long time for the story to be over, if
it ever is over. In this case, however, the results are rather dramatic, making
me unable to resist.</span></span></div>
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Tim Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14115734256243189723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-62985627476970187902014-03-20T08:00:00.000-07:002014-03-21T10:50:43.113-07:00Astronomer of the Month: Viviana Acquaviva<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each month
we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an
interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This
month's Astronomer is <a href="http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~vacquaviva/web/Home.html">Viviana Acquaviva.</a></span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tell us a little about yourself!</span></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/pub/image-KGGMfteDtRwYYiEt6sgEKho8NbvN7lwQHagX9W6DNtMq7QxnKGGXLu3DNhmg7lsuofJk/steven-boada.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></span></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1YJeiIcZOKsmhyphenhyphenN3_JZbEYVfnY9AhW-L2TeWh9kb421-ViJ_i7wlL9b3TrNkp7gOMRHVCBaO4zdOTdcjeg_L09M0mXLEUuvoMm5lnFPttN5RubKD-P7N4KNye6txpFaisDTqUPou5gk/s1600/AotM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1YJeiIcZOKsmhyphenhyphenN3_JZbEYVfnY9AhW-L2TeWh9kb421-ViJ_i7wlL9b3TrNkp7gOMRHVCBaO4zdOTdcjeg_L09M0mXLEUuvoMm5lnFPttN5RubKD-P7N4KNye6txpFaisDTqUPou5gk/s1600/AotM.jpg" height="320" width="305" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My name is Viviana Acquaviva and I work as an assistant professor of
Physics at <a href="http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/">CityTech</a>, one of 23 CUNY (City University of New York)
campuses. I am originally from Italy and I completed all my studies
there. I attended the <a href="http://www.unipi.it/index.php/english">University of Pisa</a> where I got a Bachelors degree in
Physics, and I moved to the <a href="https://www.sissa.it/">International School for Advanced Studies</a>
(SISSA) in Trieste for my PhD. After that, I jumped (well, flew) across
the pond and held two three-year postdoctoral positions, one shared
between the <a href="https://www.physics.upenn.edu/">University of Pennsylvania</a> and <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/astro/">Princeton University</a>, and one
at <a href="http://astronomy.rutgers.edu/">Rutgers University</a>. I've been in my current position since 2012. I
enjoy cycling and word games, and I'm quite the stereotypical Italian: I
like to eat, drink wine, and zip around Brooklyn on my Vespa. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your specific area of research? What is your role within the CANDELS team? </span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have explored several areas of research -- I effectively started as a
theoretical cosmologist (and even did research with pen and paper -- lots
of paper) working on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29">inflation</a> and the early Universe. During my PhD I
worked mostly on the phenomenology of extended <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy">Dark Energy</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_models_of_gravity">Modified Gravity models</a>. In my first postdoc I added some statistics and data
analysis to my skill set and used them to analyze <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background">Cosmic Microwave Background</a> (CMB) data, and in the
last few years I became interested in the physical properties of
galaxies and how to measure them in a rigorous, model-independent way.
My latest projects focus on using data mining and machine learning
techniques to help us navigate large data sets. In CANDELS, I am an
active member of the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-multi-wavelength-shapes-of-galaxies.html">SED</a> fitting and <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">photometric redshift</a> team, and I try to help
make accurate measurements of properties of galaxies such as mass, age,
dust content, and star formation history.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What made you want to become an astronomer? At what age did you know you were interested in astronomy? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have a slightly unconventional background and I never really dreamed
of becoming an astronomer, or thought I would become one, but I'm very
glad I did (although I think I still lack many qualities a "real"
astronomer should have, such as a solid knowledge of how to operate a
simple telescope…). I started off thinking I'd want to go into some
obscure branch of mathematical physics, became fascinated with cosmology
in my senior year of college when I took a GR course, and sought an
external advisor for my "Laurea" thesis (a meatier version of a senior
honors thesis in the US) since there where no cosmologists where I was
studying. When the time came to pick my PhD area, I was admitted to both
the Astrophysics and High-Energy physics programs, and I bumped into
the person who would become my advisor, Carlo Baccigalupi. I thought the
research he was doing was super cool, I really enjoyed talking to him
about science, and I decided I'd go for Astro. The rest, as they say, is
history, although I still haven't had any formal training in Astronomy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What obstacles have you encountered on your path to becoming an astronomer and how did you overcome them? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I can look back and identify three main roadblocks. The first came early
in college -- I had been able to cruise through my high school years
quite easily, and when I started college, I assumed that finding things
difficult simply meant that I wasn't cut out for this field. I remember a
tearful conversation with my mom in my junior year, where I was adamant
(as adamant as a crying and distressed individual can be) about having
chosen the wrong major and wanting to go into economics. She patiently
listened and encouraged me to do whatever I felt was right. A few months
later, thanks to the support of my classmates who kept telling me that
in their opinion, I could understand physics pretty well and I was just
having performance issues in tests, things began to get better, and I
ended up graduating summa cum laude and happy as a clam. Thanks, mom.
Thanks, mates.<br />
<br />Afterward, perhaps the most difficult waters to navigate were
related to moving to the US and having to face a radically different
work ethic and culture. I wasn't prepared for the competitiveness of
this environment and I wasn't focused enough on my career. Up to that
point, I had worked reasonable hours and had mostly had a "happy go
lucky" approach, which, in all honesty, had worked pretty well. I had no
clue what all these fellowships everybody was talking about were,
and I had no intention or desire to work 12-hour days and every weekend,
but suddenly I was surrounded by people who had been planning their
next move for years and were determined to succeed, as well as very
smart. Work was suddenly good -- perhaps too good, as if the number of
hours spent at work, rather than the results, was something of which to
be proud. My reaction (perhaps also because of lack of a stable mentor
at that time) was to idle, and I got stuck in a weird mode where I
wasn't really passionate about what I was doing, I wasn't productive,
and these two evils kept feeding upon each other. It took some serious
job (or lack thereof) scare and a great mentor to get back on track and
realize that hard and systematic work was the cure. <br />
<br />And then of course, a few years later, there was "the faculty job"
issue. I don't have much to say about how to overcome this one, because
getting a job requires luck. I don't mean that I don't deserve the job
that I got, but I am aware that it could have gone another way and
whoever was next on that shortlist is probably as good as I am. I can
share a few pointers for anxiety-control during this time, though. I
tried to keep my options open during the process, by identifying valid
alternatives and trying to build some additional skills. For example, I
took a graduate course in machine learning in my last year as a postdoc,
knowing that this was a field that fascinated me and maybe it would
help me find a job I'd like outside academia. I also decided to only
apply for positions I really wanted; geographical constraints were an
issue for me, and I only selected a handful of locations where I thought
I would be happy living. Where to set this boundary is a very personal
decision, but I do strongly believe in only spending energy and time
toward the things we want - a job we don't like isn't better than the
alternative, even if the alternative is unknown. Of course, I had no
significant other or children at that time, so it was easy for me to
decide to play it out this way. And finally, in times of disappointment,
I found it useful to take a break, travel and just get out of it all.
Placing myself in an environment where nobody saw the big deal in not
getting a faculty job in a particular place was a great help in
regaining perspective.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Who has been your biggest scientific role model and why? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I don't know if I have one specific person in mind, I was fortunate to
work with many incredible scientists and I like to think I learned
something from each of them. The person who had the biggest impact on my
career was probably <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2014/02/astronomer-of-month-eric-gawiser.html">Eric Gawiser</a>, another CANDELS team member and a
fantastic mentor for me throughout the years. He offered me a job in a
field very different from the one I had been working in up to that time,
and let me have time to build up my knowledge in the new field. I had
months where I was allowed to just study statistics books and work on
code, and I remember them very fondly. But all the advisers I had have
qualities that I admire and taught me something that I hope to replicate
with my own students and mentees. Sabino Matarrese, my "Laurea" thesis
advisor, believed in me even if I came from another University and he
had no idea of what my GPA was; Carlo Baccigalupi taught me cosmology
from the very beginning an put up with my "enticing" combination of
inexperience and arrogance; Licia Verde will forever be my icon of hard,
passionate work and lack of fear in asking questions; David Spergel
taught me to always be open to new subjects and listen to all talks and
all people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is it like to be an astronomer? What is your favorite aspect? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My daily job involves a mix of teaching, research, and service work. I
teach two or three classes per semester; fortunately they are small
classes and usually it's introductory Astronomy, so I don't need a ton
of preparation time by now. I have about two full days a week for
research, and I try to divide them among my own (let's say,
first-author) project, and projects with collaborator and students. I
serve on various committees both for my department and my college, and I
participate in a number of outreach activities, from Planetarium trips
to public lectures. NYC is a very special place for that; the last talk I
gave was within <a href="http://astronomyontap.org/">Astronomy on Tap</a>, a series of events set up in various
bars across NYC, and in May I will give a lecture on space in a
black-tie event in a club who had Mark Twain among its early members. I
look forward to talking about space while sipping champagne and wearing
an evening gown! My favorite aspect of academic life is the freedom to
choose what you want to work on and the flexibility in organizing my
day. These factors are not exclusive to Astronomy, but I think they are
just an incredible luxury. I like being around students -- it's tiring
but very rewarding, and I hope that being in contact with young people
will keep me young at heart and prevent me from getting bored, my
greatest fear of all times. What are for me the best things about our
field in particular? 1. I know tons of cool factoids (especially now
after a few years of teaching -- Yes, I'm serious, a paper clip of
neutron star matter weighs as much as Mount Everest, and that's why you
need to know scientific notation!), and 2. our job title is quite
awesome (Hi, I'm an astrophysicist, and a woman! Ta-da!).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What motivates you in your research? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Probably the fact that there are constantly new challenges. It's
interesting that what keeps me motivated is also what makes me very
frustrated at times: working on open-ended questions requires a good
dose of self-discipline and humor. I was born with at least some of the
latter but I constantly have to work on the former… Also, I've always
been one to enjoy the trip more than the destination, so I'd say that my
motivation comes more from the fact that I love sitting at my desk and
dealing with the puzzle of the day than from the desire of solving
long-standing problems in Astronomy. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite astronomical facility? (This could include telescopes or super computers, for example) </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am going to go with the <a href="http://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium">Hayden Planetarium</a> for this one. I hold a
visiting scientist appointment there, and I just find it an incredibly
inspiring place where to be. I went observing at <a href="http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/Magellan">Magellan</a> once (I was
the third astronomer on the trip and my job was basically to look around
and not touch anything) and that place was magical and unforgettable -
but then again, I have nothing else to compare it to, so perhaps it
wouldn't be right to call it my favorite telescope.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Because of the luxury of a (hopefully) permanent position, I have been
trying to shift my mental focus on longer-term objectives rather than
short-term ones -- asking myself for real, what would I want to
accomplish in the next few years? In terms of research, I would really
like to focus on machine learning and data mining techniques and their
applications in Astronomy. I also want to see some of the
underprivileged undergraduate students I supervise enter a good graduate
program, and I want to help my institution strengthen the programs
currently in place for undergraduate research. </span></span></div>
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</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you could have any astronomy related wish, what would it be? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Turn off all the lights in NYC for a day, and show all my students what
the sky really looks like. They were the ones who told me that in LA,
during a massive black-out in 1994, many people called 911 reporting "a
weird object" in the sky: it was the Milky Way.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite, most mind-boggling astronomy fact? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tough one! I guess the fact that most mind-boggling facts can be
explained really simply and understood by everyone. In one of the Astro
labs, we count the galaxies in a picture of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field">HUDF</a> and then to
calculate the number of galaxies in the Universe based on how many
HUDFs-sized fields there are in the sky, and the number comes up
surprisingly accurate (and definitely mind-boggling). The fact that so
much of the history and fate of the Universe can be described in terms
of six numbers and a couple of differential equations is also pretty
amazing to me.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is there anything else you would like for the public to know about you or astronomy in general? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I talked about myself enough, and I can't say anything new about
Astronomy… so I'll close with a suggestion: if you can, take a trip to a
dark location, look up, and wonder. Caveat: your kids might get a lot
more passionate about science after this trip!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-59838161698915547882014-03-06T08:00:00.000-07:002014-03-06T08:00:07.058-07:00CANDELS Results Highlighted in Other Blogs<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQA2g1iahFR83MY6eUz_56sMWrFsuUxPBm2__f1N306wnSLQ8dK5e7IC4w9LwPJzE9aLsk3Bkp8JHtujPA1tuo4eFallvIIstLKWRNPC5YsQfaIYzGW3f8Cyyq1hMGGlHB_BJqYAm8Fwc/s1600/merger.pretty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQA2g1iahFR83MY6eUz_56sMWrFsuUxPBm2__f1N306wnSLQ8dK5e7IC4w9LwPJzE9aLsk3Bkp8JHtujPA1tuo4eFallvIIstLKWRNPC5YsQfaIYzGW3f8Cyyq1hMGGlHB_BJqYAm8Fwc/s1600/merger.pretty.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The recent CANDELS paper (<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5477">Morphologies of z~0.7 AGN Host Galaxies in CANDELS: No trend of merger incidence with AGN Luminosity)</a> by Carolin Villforth (see her blog post on it <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-to-feed-black-hole.html">here</a>) has been discussed in a couple of other blogs. The first is a <a href="http://blog.tanya-urrutia.com/2014/02/17/january-2014-carolin-villforth-on-merger-rates-in-x-ray-selected-agn/">post</a> by Tanya Urrutia and the second is a post on <a href="http://astrobites.org/2014/02/20/do-major-mergers-trigger-luminous-agn/">Astrobites</a>. Check them out!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-79365154876311335062014-02-27T08:00:00.000-07:002014-02-27T08:00:05.149-07:00Astronomer of the Month: Eric Gawiser<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each month
we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an
interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This
month's Astronomer is <a href="http://physics.rutgers.edu/~gawiser/">Eric Gawiser.</a></span></span></i><br />
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<br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tell us a little about yourself!</span></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/pub/image-KGGMfteDtRwYYiEt6sgEKho8NbvN7lwQHagX9W6DNtMq7QxnKGGXLu3DNhmg7lsuofJk/steven-boada.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hi! I'm Eric Gawiser, an Associate Professor in the <a href="http://astronomy.rutgers.edu/">Department of Physics & Astronomy</a> at <a href="http://www.rutgers.edu/">Rutgers University</a>. We academics tend to
walk a long, roundabout path to becoming a professor, and I'm no
exception. I started out as an undergraduate at <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/">Princeton University</a>,
majoring in both Physics and Public Policy. Grad school was at the
<a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/index.html">University of California at Berkeley</a>, leading to a Ph.D. in Physics; I
studied theoretical cosmology in those days. Then I switched
specialties, starting postdoctoral research in observational studies of
galaxy formation at the <a href="http://casswww.ucsd.edu/index.php/Main_Page">University of California, San Diego</a>. My next
postdoctoral fellowship was at <a href="http://www.astro.yale.edu/">Yale University</a>; during two years of that
time, I had a joint appointment at <a href="http://www.uchile.cl/">Universidad de Chile</a> and spent half
my time living in Santiago, Chile. That was an incredible opportunity
for an astrophysicist, as half of the world's biggest telescopes are
located in the Atacama Desert in the northern Chile, and I had the
chance to observe with most of those. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your specific area of research? What is your role within the CANDELS team? </span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My research focuses on distant galaxies. Projects range from
trying to understand what makes certain types of galaxies form new stars
to using these galaxies as cosmological probes that can reveal the
nature of dark matter and dark energy. In CANDELS, my research group
at Rutgers has been active in assessing the data quality coming in from
the Hubble Space Telescope, offering advice on how to generate catalogs
of galaxies from it, and in improving methods used to determine the
distances to and masses of those galaxies. On March 1, the
<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/">Astrophysical Journal</a> will publish our first major CANDELS paper, led by
Carlos Vargas (now a graduate student at <a href="https://www.nmsu.edu/">New Mexico State University</a>)
and Hannah Bish (an undergraduate senior at Rutgers) - you can find it
at: </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.6341">http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.6341</a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In
that paper, we used the exquisite data from CANDELS to show that a data
analysis technique called "stacking" works pretty well on average but
fails to reveal that distant galaxies called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-alpha_emitter">Lyman Alpha Emitters</a> have
masses that vary by a factor of 100. We discovered that these Lyman
Alpha Emitters have much more rapid star formation than you would expect
given their masses. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What made you want to become an astronomer? At what age did you know you were interested in astronomy? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My original interest was in math and physics, and I slowly gravitated
towards astrophysics (pun intended, sorry!). Growing up, I wanted to
become a scientist but was also interested in marine biology, as the
idea of spending one's time doing research on tropical coral reefs
seemed pretty enjoyable. I got to take an astronomy course in high
school, which put it on my list of career possibilities, but I chose
Physics instead as an undergraduate major. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What obstacles have you encountered on your path to becoming an astronomer and how did you overcome them? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Academia can be a rough road. As you ascend from undergrad to grad
school to postdoc to faculty, the competition for the next position
becomes more and more intense. It's hard not to become cynical as you
see certain people who get strong pushes from their Ph.D. advisor get
the best job offers based more on reputation than merit and observe
universities trusting each other's judgment more than their own in their
hiring decisions. There are two stages in my career where I found it
hard to get a job at the next level, but I have always believed in
making your own luck -- whatever opportunity I received, I thought about
what type of research I could do best with the collaborators and
facilities available at that institution. In the long run, I found that
creativity and hard work get recognized. The flaws of academia are now
an opportunity for me, as when I hire postdoctoral researchers or
Rutgers hires new faculty, I look for people who are stronger than their
recommendation letters or worked for less famous advisors. There are
incredibly talented people in this field, many of them in CANDELS, and
my greatest enjoyment in doing research is getting to work with people
who are clever, motivated, and team-oriented. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Who has been your biggest scientific role model and why? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Out of many role models both current and historical, I would have to
choose <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo">Galileo</a>, who was my original childhood inspiration to become a
scientist. He conducted creative experiments to figure out how the
world actually works and was brave enough to stand up to incredibly
powerful forces when his results disagreed with their propaganda. We
need a lot more of that in modern society. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is it like to be an astronomer? What is your favorite aspect? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Making a new discovery in astronomy is an incredible feeling. I have
had a few special moments in my career when I felt that I understood
something that nobody on Earth had understood before. It's a scary
moment too, as after the initial "Eureka!" moment you work hard to
defend your discovery in a written paper and submit it for publication
while hoping that the scientific referees and your colleagues will end
up accepting your results. However, I never think I'm truly the
first being to understand something, as I believe there are other
intelligent civilizations in the universe whose astronomers are much
more advanced than we are. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What motivates you in your research? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of my graduate school mentors, <a href="http://astro.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/davis.html">Prof. Marc Davis</a> of U.C.
Berkeley, taught us that when it comes to research, you should either do
something first or do it best. This acknowledges the reality of
astrophysics research that we need more data beyond the first discovery
of a new type of object to really be sure that we understand what's
happening. I have always been motivated by the "do it best" half of
this motto, seeking large samples of distant galaxies with high-quality
data to analyze. CANDELS is perfect for that! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Inspiration is a funny thing, though. I have had my best research ideas while traveling, especially when sitting on a beach. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite astronomical facility? (This could include telescopes or super computers, for example) </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's not the biggest telescope in the world, but the Cerro Tololo
Inter-American Observatory (<a href="http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/">CTIO</a>) in Chile has played the biggest role
in my research. I spent 38 nights there gathering data for the <a href="http://physics.rutgers.edu/~gawiser/MUSYC">MUSYC survey</a>. Summer nights are warm, and we take long exposures, so I relish the
chance to walk outside and let my eyes adjust to the darkness and see
thousands of individual stars plus the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds">Large and Small Magellanic Clouds</a>
and the dusty center of our Milky Way galaxy. Combine that with the
great data yielded by the wide-field <a href="http://www.ctio.noao.edu/mosaic/">MOSAIC-2</a> camera on its 4-meter
telescope, and CTIO's as good as it gets! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On a beach! (In order to spur new research ideas, of course.) </span></span></div>
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</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you could have any astronomy related wish, what would it be? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think that astronomy deserves 10 times the level of public investment
that it receives, and I would wish for it to receive that. Here is the
argument: nothing that I know of brings humanity together across
borders, cultures and languages more effectively than realizing that we
all share one fragile planet orbiting 1 out of 100 billion stars in 1
out of 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. The gain to human
civilization of fully recognizing this commonality would be immense - a
reduction in war, increased trade, a greater focus on developing and
sharing technology to solve common problems. These benefits would
vastly outweigh the relatively modest costs of supporting new
astronomical discoveries and increased efforts to share our findings
with the public. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite, most mind-boggling astronomy fact? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We don't know yet if our universe is infinite in size or not. I think
this is the greatest embarrassment of modern cosmology, but it's not
obvious how to tell the difference. We know that our universe is very
big, at least as big as 14 billion light years in every direction, and
there hasn't been enough time since the Big Bang for us to see further
to look for signs that we've seen everything there is to see! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
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<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is there anything else you would like for the public to know about you or astronomy in general? </span></b></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've always found it critical to balance the intense time demands of an
astrophysics career with the stress release of exercise. I play soccer
whenever I get the chance. I used to be a competitive (though far from
professional) triathlete in graduate school and recently came "out of
retirement" to start doing triathlons again. In some ways, I am only
truly relaxed when my brain has too little oxygen to think about
research, and exercise does the trick! </span></span></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-68784400067276278922014-02-13T08:00:00.000-07:002014-02-13T08:00:01.627-07:00Breaking the Galaxy Distance Record<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this loooong overdue post, I’m going to talk about what happened following the events of my <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/08/using-our-largest-set-of-eyes.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>. In that post, I talked about how my research team and I used the Keck 10 meter telescope to obtain spectroscopy of 43 distant galaxies. To briefly recap, my group and I have been using CANDELS images to search for very distant galaxies (those that we see as they were within one billion years of the Big Bang, which gives them a redshift greater than 6). In a few previous posts, I’ve talked about some of the exciting things we’ve been learning in the distant universe, including how these galaxies <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/did-candels-find-first-stars-in-universe.html" target="_blank">get redder with time</a> (as they build up their heavy elements; i.e. planet-making material), and whether galaxies can account for the reionization of the universe (yes! we think).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-find-distant-galaxies.html" target="_blank">this previous post</a>, we talked about how we use images to find these galaxies - essentially, since they are so far away, they are moving very quickly away from us, thus their light is redshifted due to the Doppler effect. Ideally, you would take a spectrum of every galaxy to search for redshifted emission lines to measure your redshift. However, this is impractical for samples of hundreds or thousands of galaxies. On the bright side, we can get a rough estimate of the redshift using imaging alone, and this technique has been well-documented over the past ~20 years.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The downside of this is that 1) the redshift is only approximate, and that makes everything else you learn a little more uncertain; and 2) its possible that some galaxies you think are really distant are actually close by galaxies that just happen to be very red. To get around this, we typically try to take spectra of a small portion of our sample, to verify that our contamination is small. Fast forward, and this is why we went to Keck, to try to measure the redshifts for many of our distant galaxy candidates.</span></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As I looked at the data we took at Keck, we found a very bright emission line from one of our distant galaxy candidates before we even left Hawaii. This left me feeling very optimistic! However, as we continued to analyze our data, we found that the first line we saw would be the <i>only</i> line we would see - out of the 43 observed galaxies, we detected an emission line from only a single one. This may seem like a failure, but lets examine our detected galaxy a little more closely.</span></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsv27FOw5esAfKMsxxsKWnTeOyhyTMYKMZ54UyMAkQuOQoqdHCW_6ePuMd-qiqNIBBuG5Q9e3a5VUwpS69IozFByCuIpQoXMUY_ktUQxwleTvfOdZ-ZDVYtk-womlqmlYVNKqHwyRYfuk/s1600/CANDELSfield_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsv27FOw5esAfKMsxxsKWnTeOyhyTMYKMZ54UyMAkQuOQoqdHCW_6ePuMd-qiqNIBBuG5Q9e3a5VUwpS69IozFByCuIpQoXMUY_ktUQxwleTvfOdZ-ZDVYtk-womlqmlYVNKqHwyRYfuk/s1600/CANDELSfield_small.jpg" height="640" width="528" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/gallery/candels-image-highlighting-galaxy-z8gnd5296" target="_blank">This image</a> shows a region of the CANDELS GOODS-North field, just above the handle of the Big Dippler. Highlighted is z8_GND_5296, the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy in the universe. The galaxy looks very red in this image, as it is so distant (and thus moving so quickly away from us), that it is only detected in Hubble's reddest filters. Image Credit: V. Tilvi, S. Finkelstein, C. Papovich, A. Koekemoer, CANDELS and STScI/NASA.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The emission line we saw was the Lyman alpha line from hydrogen. This line is emitted in the ultraviolet, but we saw it all the way in the infrared, meaning that it has a very high redshift. In fact, the measured redshift of this galaxy is 7.5, making it the <a href="http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2013/10/23" target="_blank">highest redshift spectroscopically confirmed galaxy</a>*** (the previous record was at 7.2). That's exciting in itself, but the galaxy had more in store for us. Using how bright it is in the CANDELS imaging, we can measure how fast this galaxy is converting hydrogen gas into new stars, and we found that its “star-formation rate” is an insane 300 solar masses per year; this is 150 times faster than the Milky Way!!! From what we (thought we) knew at high redshift, if you found a random redshift seven galaxy, you would have expected it to be forming stars at around 10 solar masses per year, so this galaxy is forming stars 30 times faster than its peers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigRC7nxhJOW6p1DHxFrix8u1DXeLK3dKAQwevWYntq_Ndm2KvuCbWse2ow04pRf1wUWyFvYtfvbXN8jN2dM5fNgWh2Ue6O9puoRk68BSW1TWse6N07z1aUVAGXmT5SwFK0Wnr1oeVnon0/s1600/spectrum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigRC7nxhJOW6p1DHxFrix8u1DXeLK3dKAQwevWYntq_Ndm2KvuCbWse2ow04pRf1wUWyFvYtfvbXN8jN2dM5fNgWh2Ue6O9puoRk68BSW1TWse6N07z1aUVAGXmT5SwFK0Wnr1oeVnon0/s1600/spectrum.jpg" height="283" width="400" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Our spectrum from the MOSFIRE spectrograph on the Keck 10 meter telescope. <br />The white blob in the top panel shows Lyman alpha emission from z8_GND_5296. <br />At the observed wavelength, this corresponds to a redshift of 7.5078. The bottom <br />panel shows a cross-cut of the top spectrum (what we call a one-dimensional spectrum), <br />which shows the galaxy's flux versus wavelength. You can see the peak <br />corresponding to Lyman-alpha emission (highlighted by the red line). <br />There are a number of other peaks too, which all correspond to the position of emission <br />lines from our own atmosphere. These are very bright, and we try to subtract <br />them out, so what you see here are residuals. The lines are difficult to <br />subtract completely, because their intensity changes rapidly with time.</span></span></td></tr>
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<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not only has this level of star factory not been seen at these redshifts before, but it was also a complete surprise to theorists, who do not see such galaxies in their models. While this galaxy could just be a weirdo, we don’t think thats the case. The previous record redshift holder I mentioned, at z=7.2, has a star-formation rate of 100 solar masses per year. Smaller, yes, but still very high. And, it is located in the same region of the sky as our galaxy. What are the odds?!? What we think we’re learning is that these extreme star factories are much more common in the early universe than previously thought, so now we need to get with our theorist friends and try to figure out why that is.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As for the other 42 galaxies we didn’t see? The jury is still out. It may be that the gas between galaxies is becoming neutral (as would happen if we’re entering the epoch of reionization), and this neutral gas “fog” is screening us from seeing the Lyman alpha photons. Or, it could be that these distant galaxies are becoming increasingly rich in gas themselves, preventing these Lyman alpha photons from escaping. Only time and further study will tell, but we’re hot on the trail! If you're interested in all the details, you can see our paper, which has been published in Nature, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6031" target="_blank">here</a>, and our official press release, which is <a href="http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2013/10/23" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">***Often in the news there are articles about the most distant galaxies in the universe - some of these are spectroscopically confirmed like our galaxy here, while others are candidate galaxies, meaning that their redshifts have not been verified. While many of these candidates turn out to be real, measuring the redshift spectroscopically is the gold standard for galaxy distance measurements. A case in point is our <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2014/02/clash-cluster-lensing-and-supernova.html" target="_blank">recent blog post</a>, which mentions a galaxy with a redshift of close to 11 from the CLASH survey. This galaxy has not been spectroscopically confirmed (though Hubble will try to do it in a few months). However, in the particular case of this galaxy, I think its highly likely that its real, as not only are its colors that expected of such a distant galaxy, but the positions of the lensed images are what you would expect for a galaxy at the estimated redshift. Hopefully Hubble will measure a redshift, and, if not, then we’ll have to wait a few years for the next generation of telescopes.</span></span></div>
Steven Finkelsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364002770850102832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-6600999473808470462014-02-05T08:00:00.000-07:002014-02-05T08:00:08.513-07:00CLASH : the Cluster Lensing And Supernova search with Hubble<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In 2010 the Hubble Space Telescope launched three bold new initiatives that came to be called the Multi-Cycle Treasury programs. One was the CANDELS program, the parent of this blog. Another was the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury program (<a href="http://www.astro.washington.edu/groups/phat/Home.html">PHAT</a>), a deep and detailed study of the nearby galaxy M31, led by Julianne Dalcanton of the University of Washington. The third program was called <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~postman/CLASH/Home.html">CLASH</a>: the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (tortured acronyms were a prerequisite for approval of the HST time). The CLASH team (not to be confused with <a href="http://www.theclash.com/">The Clash</a>) is led by Marc Postman from the Space Telescope Science Institute, and includes about 50 astronomers at some 25 institutions around the world. This survey is in many ways a close sister to the CANDELS program, and indeed there is significant overlap across the two groups, especially in the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/09/supernova-hunting_28.html">supernova search</a> component, which has been a joint CLASH+CANDELS effort.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Galaxy cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 (or MACS 1206 for short) as viewed <br />through Hubble in the CLASH program. Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/">NASA</a>, <a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/">ESA</a>, <br />M. Postman (<a href="http://www.stsci.edu/">STScI</a>), and the CLASH Team</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The CLASH program takes a deep look at 25 massive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_cluster">galaxy clusters</a>. These are collections of galaxies (a few hundred in each), hot gas (heated to above 10 million degrees), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter">dark matter</a> (more on that mysterious stuff below). The clusters in the CLASH sample sit at <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshifts</a> between about 0.2 and 0.9, so we are seeing them at a fairly recent epoch in terms of cosmic history (the universe was already more than 6 billion years old when the light we see left these clusters). Several of these clusters have been studied in great detail, but the CLASH program has opened up a new window to look in at one of the great mysteries of the universe: the nature of dark matter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When Hubble looks at a galaxy cluster in the CLASH survey, it captures the ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light emitted by billions upon billions of stars in the many galaxies that live within the cluster. Astronomers have long known, however, that these stars make up only a small fraction of the total contents of these clusters. Far more important is the hot gas in the Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM). This superheated gas (mostly Hydrogen and Helium) has been stripped away from the galaxies by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force">tidal gravitational forces</a> and the effects of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_pressure">ram pressure</a>. The gas is so hot that it emits x-ray radiation, which can be observed using x-ray observatories like <a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/">Chandra</a> and <a href="http://sci.esa.int/xmm-newton/">XMM-Newton</a>. The mass of gas in a typical galaxy cluster is almost 10 times greater than the total mass of all the stars in all the member galaxies. However, even after counting up all of the stars and gas, we still have only captured about 10% of the total mass of the galaxy cluster. The other 90% is (presumably) in the form of dark matter.</span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Dark matter" is the name we assign to all the mass in the universe that does not emit any light. There are a number of theories as to what this dark matter could be, and the most promising idea right now seems to be that it is some form of elementary particle that does not interact with other matter -- except through the force of gravity. In galaxy clusters, we have two primary lines of evidence that reveal the presence of a large concentration of dark matter. First, the motions of the galaxies in the cluster show that there must be a large central mass pulling the galaxies in and through the cluster (more mass than we can account for in stars and gas). Second, we see the effect of the dark matter on background galaxies through gravitational lensing.</span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Einstein's theory of relativity tells us that the force of gravity is in fact a warping of spacetime. This distortion of the fabric of our universe affects all forms of matter -- as we see in the motions of planets, stars and galaxies -- and it also affects light itself. In the CLASH clusters, the warping is sufficiently strong to bend the pathway of light rays passing through the cluster. This results in a lensing effect, as light rays are distorted and redirected such that they focus on our location here in the Milky Way. We see the extraordinary evidence for this lensing in the form of absurdly stretched galaxies, long arcs, and impossibly bright background sources that have been distorted and magnified by the cluster's gravitational lens. </span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The principal aim of the CLASH program is to use these lensing artifacts to construct detailed models of the matter content of each of the 25 clusters. The cluster models are built by piecing together these distorted background sources to make a map of the dark matter that Hubble cannot see. Adding in evidence from the star light and the x-ray gas emission provides a complete picture of all the content in the cluster. With all of this information, the CLASH team has been able to improve our understanding of how these clusters are formed, and even to put new constraints on the nature of the dark matter fluid that dominates the cluster.</span></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-36-a-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-36-a-web.jpg" height="320" width="314" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The tiny red blob (just a fraction of the size of our Milky Way) is among <br />the most distant galaxies ever observed. The object is observed just <br />420 million years after the big bang, and is only visible to the Hubble <br />Space Telescope due to the magnification from the massive galaxy <br />cluster MACS0647, which lies in between us and the distant <br />proto-galaxy. Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/">NASA</a>, <a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/">ESA</a>, M. Postman and D. Coe (<a href="http://www.stsci.edu/">STScI</a>), <br />and the CLASH Team </span></span></td></tr>
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The gravitational lenses in the CLASH clusters also provide a powerful tool for looking back into the very early universe. The CLASH team has twice discovered objects behind the gravitational clusters that are among the most distant galaxies ever seen, <a href="http://hub.jhu.edu/2012/09/19/wei-zheng-distant-galaxy">first in April 2012</a>, and then <a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/36/">again in November 2012</a>. These very distant background sources would normally be far too faint for even Hubble to see, but the intervening cluster acts like a natural telescope, focusing the light from the far-off galaxies so that Hubble can just barely detect them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The science work of the CLASH team is still in progress, and we expect many more exciting discoveries are yet to come. Hubble is not done with deep galaxy cluster surveys, either, as the new <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/hst/campaigns/frontier-fields/">Frontier Fields</a> initiative has already begun to follow in the footsteps of CLASH. </span></span><br />
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Steve Rodneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15080508991831883266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-4223196150205579232014-01-30T08:00:00.000-07:002014-01-30T08:00:00.208-07:00More about CANDELS at the AAS<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As mentioned by <a href="http://www.colby.edu/physics/faculty/mcgrath/Home.html" target="_blank">Liz McGrath</a> in her recent <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2014/01/223rd-aas-meeting-in-washington-d-c.html" target="_blank">blog post</a>, the American Astronomical Society held its 223rd meeting in early January. Altogether there were 37 presentations that had the word CANDELS somewhere in their title, author list, or abstract, and probably several others that used CANDELS under the radar. I thought it worth sharing a few highlights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The meeting opened with the Kavli lecture by Bob Williams, the former director of the Space Telescope Science institute and president of the International Astronomical Union, who recounted the history of the original Hubble Deep Field and the science legacy that flowed from that first observation. One of the things he emphasized is how the making the data completely non-proprietary helped build the scientific momentum. Instead of observing separate spots in the sky and keeping the data to themselves, astronomers interested in the distant universe were suddenly much more willing to point telescopes to the same spot and share the data. CANDELS carries forward the legacy of this culture change; all of the Hubble data and most of the data from other telescopes are available to everyone.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A figure from Steve Finkelstein's talk, showing the number of galaxies found at redshifts <br />z=7 and 8 from the ultra-deep survey fields (blue) and CANDELS (red). Absolute magnitude <br />is a measure of brightness, with smaller numbers (more negative) indicating brighter galaxies. <br />CANDELS is great for finding brighter (rarer) galaxies, while the ultra-deep fields <br />excel at finding fainter (but more common) galaxies.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On Monday afternoon, the CANDELS and <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~postman/CLASH/Home.html" target="_blank">CLASH</a> projects were featured in a special session. This was an opportunity for astronomers from both projects to give a top-level summary of the results. The CANDELS talks were given by <a href="http://jeyhan.info/" target="_blank">Jeyhan Kartaltepe</a>, <a href="http://www.as.utexas.edu/~stevenf/Home.html" target="_blank">Steve Finkelstein</a>, Yu Lu and <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/10/meet-steve-rodney.html" target="_blank">Steve Rodney</a>. Jeyhan summarized the results on <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-do-we-measure-galaxy-morphology.html">galaxy morphology</a>, with particular attention to the CANDELS visual classifications and the evidence that <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/luminous-infrared-galaxies.html">ultraluminous infrared galaxies</a> are associated with <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmic-collisions-galaxy-mergers-and.html">galaxy collisions and mergers</a>, even at high redshift. Steve Finkelstein summarized the state of research on the most distant galaxies. He showed a nice diagram that helps to put into perspective the contributions of the "deep but narrow" fields (the Hubble Ultradeep field and associated parallel observations), and CANDELS. He also talked his discovery of what is currently the <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/light-from-farthest-galaxy-yet-discovered-breaks-through-cosmic-fog-1.14017" target="_blank">record-holder for the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy</a>, at redshift z=7.51. Yu Lu summarized the effort of part of the CANDELS theory group to compare semi-analytical models of galaxy formation. This is the most detailed side-by-side test of such models yet carried out and will be of great utility in helping us understand what we are learning from CANDELS. Finally, Steve Rodney partnered with Or Graur of the CLASH team to give a summary of the supernova program, including the first estimates of the evolution of supernova rates from both surveys.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A figure from Guillermo Barro's talk about the evolution of compact galaxies at high redshift. <br />The vertical axis shows how active the galaxy is in forming stars. Specifically, it shows <br />the ratio of each galaxy's star-formation rate, to its total stellar mass. The horizontal axis <br />shows how densely packed the stars are together. Dense galaxies are to the right, <br />diffuse galaxies are to the left. Guillermo is finding that galaxies tend to make the <br />transformation from being diffuse to being compact while they are still forming stars; <br />the quenching of star formation happens later.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The next day, CANDELS figured prominently in the Hieneman prize lecture given by <a href="http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~somerville/" target="_blank">Rachel Somerville</a>. Rachel has been one of the leaders of the theory effort in CANDELS and recounted the progress in trying use the observations to get at the detailed physics of galaxy formation. One of the more recent results she showed in her talk was the success that she and <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/laurenporter/" target="_blank">Lauren Porter</a> have had in matching the trends that <a href="http://guaix.fis.ucm.es/%7egbc/Home.html" target="_blank">Guillermo Barro</a> and <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/10/meet-christina-williams.html" target="_blank">Christina Williams</a> see in the evolution of compact galaxies. Both Guillermo and Christina spoke that morning in a session about galaxy surveys that was almost entirely populated by CANDELS talks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In addition to the talks, there were quite a few posters. Posters are tacked to display boards in a big exhibition hall, and stay up all day. On the plus side, this gives people an opportunity to wander by and discuss the research, which is harder to do in a session packed with 5-minute talks. On the minus side, there are so many posters that it impossible to look at them all. CANDELS was very fortunate to have most of our posters on the first day located right near the entrance to the hall, so there was lots of opportunity for people to see them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was also great to see work by other groups using the CANDELS data. One of the <a href="http://news.ucsc.edu/2014/01/bright-distant-galaxies.html" target="_blank">press releases</a> from the meeting was from <a href="http://www.ucolick.org/~gdi/" target="_blank">Garth Illingworth</a>, discussing finding some suprisingly bright galaxies in the CANDELS GOODS-N data that might be at redshift z>9. These are not yet spectroscopically confirmed, but if they are really at high redshift, then they indicate that star-formation was already proceeding vigorously when the universe was only 500 million years old.</span></span></div>
Harry Fergusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737594514049700386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-85632606151994576692014-01-27T08:00:00.000-07:002014-01-27T15:22:26.414-07:00A New Type Ia Supernova in M82<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Just a couple of days ago, a dim, but quickly brightening, supernova was discovered in M82, the beautiful "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_82">cigar galaxy</a>." At "only" 12 million light years away, this is the nearest supernova to Earth since 1987 and the nearest Type Ia supernova since 1972. With the enormous changes in our imaging technology since then (including the launch and subsequent improvements to the <a href="http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/breakthroughs/">Hubble Space Telescope</a>), this is a fantastic opportunity for precision measurements of one of the brightest and most mysterious explosions in the universe.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The new supernova in M82, discovered by students at the University College London <br />Observatory. Photo by <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/23/supernova_adam_block_photo_of_the_exploding_star_in_m82.html">Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Discovering more about the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supernovae.html">nature of Type Ia supernovae</a> has been one of the primary goals of the CANDELS project. These supernovae begin as stars like our sun, which have shed their outer layers at the end of their lives and become white dwarfs. White dwarfs are the extremely dense cores of a burned-out star, and although they're only the size of our earth, they have the mass of our entire sun. The detonation happens when a nearby star adds even more mass onto this dwarf -- when the weight becomes too much, nuclear fusion ignites it and a supernova occurs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In CANDELS, we study the most distant Type Ia supernovae that we can find, the farthest of which stands at <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/04/candels-finds-most-distant-type-ia.html">over 10 billion light</a> <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/04/candels-finds-most-distant-type-ia.html">years away</a>. Our supernovae tell us about the early expansion of the universe (and its <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/">Dark Energy</a>), the chemical evolution of the universe, and how quickly supernovae form and explode around 8-10 billion years ago -- at the peak of star formation in the universe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This nearby galaxy offers a completely different, and rarer, perspective. In 1972, when the last Type Ia supernova this close to Earth exploded, it was still a year before anyone proposed the idea that these supernovae were formed in binary star systems. It was 12 years before someone realized that both stars could be white dwarfs, and 18 years before supernovae could be studied from space with the Hubble Space Telescope. It was over 25 years before such supernovae were used to discover that Dark Energy was accelerating the expansion of our universe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Motivated by the knowledge and technology gained since the last close Type Ia supernova went off, scientists will be asking an entirely different set of questions this time around. First, we'll be looking for a giant companion star that could have fed mass onto the white dwarf. If a companion star is visible, this would be the first direct evidence that a system with one white dwarf can lead to a supernova; if a companion star is not found, the theory that two white dwarfs can make a Type Ia supernova will gain credibility.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg42X-gwzR791qBAZLeloKySRoHSsI9JKWW0htqbT3hSl29F4bnfvNUJnrVQMfAE_HugXZw3B6NOOGJlY6ZYdH3IYFWg9wXsxWt_Hs4Alw-YybOhnxOxzfoibOIErxW1hEuiAoiqKOwqLI/s1600/single_degenerate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg42X-gwzR791qBAZLeloKySRoHSsI9JKWW0htqbT3hSl29F4bnfvNUJnrVQMfAE_HugXZw3B6NOOGJlY6ZYdH3IYFWg9wXsxWt_Hs4Alw-YybOhnxOxzfoibOIErxW1hEuiAoiqKOwqLI/s200/single_degenerate.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Artist's conception of the single-degenerate (one white dwarf)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">theory of Type Ia supernova explosions, wherein</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a white dwarf accretes mass from its companion</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">star. (<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2122.html">original</a>) © ESA and <a href="http://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/~jrm/">Justyn Maund</a> (Queens Univ. Belfast)</span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7wKE82Hwbph36xS8dRIrHgIqTu43aPGPvggfNQSuMz7CBOro8J3KiJNxqrP4JSc43x5fjQ__uvx0rqqWgnzbzthgLGg71VaMbITdxgslo5lJfUDSIlhjQqwF4kPbfzXAIjkD7mcCd_Zw/s1600/double_degenerate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7wKE82Hwbph36xS8dRIrHgIqTu43aPGPvggfNQSuMz7CBOro8J3KiJNxqrP4JSc43x5fjQ__uvx0rqqWgnzbzthgLGg71VaMbITdxgslo5lJfUDSIlhjQqwF4kPbfzXAIjkD7mcCd_Zw/s200/double_degenerate.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Artist's conception of the double-degenerate theory </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">of Type Ia supernova explosions, in which two white dwarfs merge <br />together as they emit <a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html">gravitational waves</a>. (<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_793.html">original</a>) © NASA, <a href="http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/index.cfm?fuseAction=people.jumpBio&iphonebookid=20272"><br />Tod Strohmayer</a> (GSFC), and Dana Berry (Chandra X-ray Observatory)</span></span></td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Second, scientists will be studying the geometry of the supernova from the fraction of polarized light emitted. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization">Polarization</a>, the orientation of a light ray's electric field, is entirely random when it originates from a spherically symmetric star. However, if one side becomes longer than the other, the light's polarization will have a preferential direction that can be measured on Earth. As the outer layers of the M82 supernova expand, they will become transparent and expose the inner material. Over the next month, scientists will be able to measure the shape of different layers and examine the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zw6Eih7QG0">three-dimensional explosion</a>. With this structural information, we'll learn more about how supernova detonation occurs; specifically, how nuclear fusion begins and spreads through the layers of the white dwarf.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/M81-M82_finder_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/M81-M82_finder_m.jpg" height="338" title="" width="300" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The location of M82 on the night sky from <a href="http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/Bright-Supernova-in-M82-241477661.html">Sky and Telescope</a>.<br />A more detailed chart is available <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2014/04/f836cf5963c3b93f7ef6d899e8a559e5d913540a.png">here</a></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lastly, Type Ia supernovae are nearly uniform in brightness, serving as excellent distance indicators for most of the visible universe. CANDELS supernova principal investigator <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~ariess/">Adam Riess</a> -- among others -- will be measuring the distance and doppler shift velocity (the reddening of its light) of this supernova to determine <a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/08/full/">how fast the local universe is</a> <a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/08/full/">expanding</a> -- and infer the amount of the mysterious Dark Energy that surrounds us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This supernova is particularly rare in that it offers opportunities not only to scientists, but for anyone with access to a dark night sky. It will brighten for approximately a week and a half, and at its peak it will be visible near Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) to anyone with a set of binoculars. Although it's impossible to predict when the next close supernova will be, I'm looking forward to seeing an exploding star with my own eyes - it may be 40 years before there's another opportunity.</span></span></div>
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David Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12014211845380183623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-32675364036155882102014-01-22T08:00:00.000-07:002014-01-22T08:00:04.970-07:00223rd AAS Meeting in Washington, D. C. <div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Twice a year, the American Astronomical Society holds
professional meetings covering a broad range of research and education topics.
This January’s meeting was held in Washington, D. C. at the National Harbor. I wouldn’t be surprised if it broke previous attendance
records, with almost 3200 people on the official registration list. </span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151856763608365&amp;set=a.10151856761728365.1073741830.57593633364&amp;type=1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCbf6DfKAyxNiwN36_LMZDnyF0uW-EcKvR90udSS7_gzjAzhIRmQjBaPhJl64j4mK7TwDpJ8R9SRv0KitNWYdijin7USajkEjA7fwnRvpLrH2yghh7-u2lUzcrvM9wWrOcanFzw5MdADU/s1600/somerville_talk_aas.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></span></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151856763608365&amp;set=a.10151856761728365.1073741830.57593633364&amp;type=1">Rachel Somerville giving the Heineman Prize Lecture. </a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151856763608365&amp;set=a.10151856761728365.1073741830.57593633364&amp;type=1">Photo credit: Joson Images/ AAS</a></span></span></td></tr>
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">CANDELS scientists had a very strong
representation at this meeting. <a href="http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~somerville/">Rachel Somerville</a> won
the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/01/and-winner-is.html">Heineman
Prize</a> and gave a lecture entitled, “The Formation of Galaxies and
Supermassive Black Holes: Insights and Puzzles.” Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/~lotz/homepage/Home.html">Jennifer Lotz</a> held a
press conference on the release of data from a new ultra-deep, wide-field
imaging survey that she is leading known as the Hubble Space Telescope <a href="http://frontierfields.org/">Frontier Fields</a> (see the image from their <a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/01/">press-release</a> below). There was also a CANDELS special session
which included 4 talks and 10 posters on CANDELS results, as well as 22 other
CANDELS-related talks and poster presentations throughout the course of the
meeting.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">HST Frontier Field Abell 2744. Image credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/">NASA</a>, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/">ESA</a>, and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the HFF Team (<a href="http://www.stsci.edu/">STScI</a>).</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">People go to the AAS for a variety of
reasons. As one of the largest
gatherings of astronomers, it is impossible to see every science talk of
interest. For this reason, I find AAS
meetings are more of a place to have discussions with your colleagues and the
larger astronomical community about priorities and goals for the future. Many of these larger, community-oriented
discussions take place during “town hall” sessions. Sometimes difficult decisions need to be
made, especially in the current funding climate. At this meeting, astronomers grappled with
the likelihood that many of our beloved facilities will either need to find
private partners to sustain operations costs, or be shut down in the next
couple years. This is because NSF does
not have the money to fund them while continuing forward with important
projects like the <a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/">James Webb Space Telescope</a>
and the <a href="http://www.lsst.org/lsst/">Large Synoptic Survey Telescope</a>. If you know anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare, you can buy yourself some quality time on top-notch facilities!</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Other important discussions include networking with more
senior astronomers, especially when you’re on the job hunt. Jon Trump wrote about this aspect of AAS in a
<a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/02/aas-and-job-hunt.html">previous
post</a>. However, the largest growing
demographic at these meetings is young student researchers. This is a great place for them to showcase
their work and gain experience talking with people about their research. For
me, this was my first AAS meeting where I was on the “other side”, serving as
faculty advisor to an undergraduate student who is applying to graduate school
this year. As my first thesis student, I
encouraged her to come present her results, while I tried my best to introduce her
to people doing exciting science as well as folks on various
graduate admissions committees. The AAS
can be a bit daunting to newcomers, so it’s the advisor’s role to help
facilitate discussion and provide a role model for students just starting down
this career path. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151854502103365&set=pb.57593633364.-2207520000.1390321412.&type=3&theater"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3NWqVfbQHDt-fQx3fRZZDenF5KaITNL0d_b93jLlDV42gI_ytgJKAwzSFH20_g3iVoPMNNh3BvA4620afnW5Lwm6ASCSZ119RRG7SwR4_uQY3xrl7OwhbZ6WFu-CN9tYV1uK_d5UZQls/s1600/neildegrassetyson_aas.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></span></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151854502103365&set=pb.57593633364.-2207520000.1390321412.&type=3&theater">Neil deGrasse Tyson at the AAS. <br />Photo credit: Joson Images/ AAS</a></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In addition to science talks, there were a
number of sessions on astronomy education research, which is another growing
aspect of the AAS community. One session
I attended on how to improve student outcomes in Astro 101-style courses,
was standing room only. It’s great to see so many professional astronomers care so deeply not just about their personal research, but also about how to improve their approach to teaching science
to non-science majors. While this is a significant part of many of our jobs, it may surprise readers to learn that most of us were never trained as teachers. Therefore, these sessions are particularly important for learning how to be effective instructors.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Astronomers also like to have a bit of fun in these
meetings. At this meeting there was a special talk by <a href="https://twitter.com/neiltyson">Neil deGrasse Tyson</a>, who
was surrounded by hundreds of adoring, geeky fans (a.k.a, professional
astronomers) as he talked about how to use twitter to engage the public in
science. There was also the
infamous AAS “after-party”, which was a bar-hopping extravaganza, complete with
astro-themed cocktails and a mechanical bull (although I never did see anyone
attempt the bull)!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Space Shuttle Discovery at the National Air and Space</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Museum. Photo credit: E. McGrath</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Finally, with the meeting being held in Washington D. C., I took advantage of the opportunity to do some astronomy-themed sightseeing. I visited the
<a href="http://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center/">National Air and Space Museum</a> hangars located near Dulles airport, where I got
to behold the impressive Space Shuttle Discovery, as well as a Mars Pathfinder prototype. The shuttle was even more impressive in person than I could have imagined—definitely worth a visit next time you're in D. C.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03126349244644241482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-86286912420839340002013-12-17T08:00:00.000-07:002013-12-17T09:08:01.678-07:00Project Astro Kick-off at Donaldson Elementary School<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like last year, I and many other astronomers around the US are participating in <a href="http://www.astrosociety.org/education/k12-educators/project-astro/">Project Astro</a>. Project Astro partners a teacher with an astronomer. We introduced Project Astro in this <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/10/1-teacher-1-astronomer-project-astro.html">previous blog post</a> and told you about the workshop that is held at the beginning of each new school year at the <a href="http://www.noao.edu/">National Optical Astronomy Observatory</a> in Tucson, Arizona. In short: The goal is for the astronomer to help the teacher to bring astronomy and science closer to the children in the classroom. Various activities support this goal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This year, I am partnered up with <a href="http://www.amphi.com/schools/donaldson.aspx">Donaldson Elementary School</a>'s 4th grade classes. Donaldson Elementary is a public school in the North West of Tucson, Arizona. Each of its 4th grade classes consists of about 30 children. Last week, I visited the 2 classes for the first time. When I entered the class room, the children looked at me with big, excited eyes. As a welcome present they had prepared a book for me with drawings of what they think a female astronomer/scientist looks like. It was really touching and their art work was great. Their female astronomers came in all shapes and sizes and forms and colours. I particularly liked the one that put me on the moon!</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8A0Q-ufrwUogaTbmWKpteSQoaj-fvTrc2L8rULgdnaulgO2BYV2db3UNUh2dUfsuTA3IhgKwDpJEWO7QdvJusY5lIvkHZXZHI2Uhhky90Ni7wvHiOd3OTVJ9XZXee8UwLxJhchk8Nh3c/s1600/PicsofScienceGirls.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8A0Q-ufrwUogaTbmWKpteSQoaj-fvTrc2L8rULgdnaulgO2BYV2db3UNUh2dUfsuTA3IhgKwDpJEWO7QdvJusY5lIvkHZXZHI2Uhhky90Ni7wvHiOd3OTVJ9XZXee8UwLxJhchk8Nh3c/s640/PicsofScienceGirls.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What does a female scientist/astronomer look like? Here are a few example images of what the children thought before meeting me. Image credit: Janine Pforr, drawings from Donaldson Elementary 4th grade pupils.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We started off with just a general question and answer session, so the children could get to know me a little better and ask anything they wanted to know. One hand after another shot up. And boy, did they ask tough questions! For example: "What's left after a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova">Supernova</a>?" or "How did the Universe start?" or "How long can a person live in space?" or "What is the biggest star?" (You can check for a list of the largest known stars <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_known_stars">here</a>, they are nearly 2000 times larger than our Sun). It was great and I was really impressed with their sheer endless curiosity.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5mtVak5rUZOhdXdHd-y-8EY03I36-JqmOZ-FdmXoEIME8FMuHepSIjzRwAZflvgN9joXYA2qylAyLl7PKSDtf3HUR8YNr9lNEKnFxXRJmVTEubHIiW7WAvIFl0ZKcW_4E4oSipYLdwRk/s1600/IMG_5100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5mtVak5rUZOhdXdHd-y-8EY03I36-JqmOZ-FdmXoEIME8FMuHepSIjzRwAZflvgN9joXYA2qylAyLl7PKSDtf3HUR8YNr9lNEKnFxXRJmVTEubHIiW7WAvIFl0ZKcW_4E4oSipYLdwRk/s320/IMG_5100.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Phases of the moon. Try to find the right order!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One solution is below, but no early peeking!!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Image Credit: "The Universe at your Fingertips"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After that, we started our first activity, the phases of the moon. At the outset I had every child draw how they see the moon. Some drew full moons, some half-moons, some crescent moons. All had craters on them. Some added aliens and the American flag and the moon lander module. We discussed how everyone's drawing looked different and then I distributed little cards that have different <a href="http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases.phtml">moon phases</a> on them, which the kids had to order. Naturally, most of them ordered the pictures from smallest crescent moon to full moon, thus creating half a cycle. The pictures however showed a full cycle. By drawing their attention to the details in the pictures, i.e. craters and mares, I had them rethink their choice and order. With a little help all of them managed to get the order properly and we talked about how often the moon cycles through its phases in a year and how long one cycle roughly is. Next time, I think we'll talk about what causes the moon phases and the seasons.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That day, the kids were very sad to see me leave, but I am sure we will have a great next visit.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With all the curiosity and interest of the children during my first visit, I have to say that I had one special highlight of the day. During recess, one of the little girls came up to me and asked if I was a scientist, which I confirmed. And then she said she wanted to become a scientist, too, when she was grown up. I thought that was very sweet and also exactly what many of us want to achieve with outreach events like this. We want to interest more children in astronomy in particular and science in general and encourage young girls especially that math and engineering and science is for them, too. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6RxhuvmtG4VkQ8t7p2te3ngxQllOOwN7qi4UYs38GKYUhdipjQ3gXfkdQjiR4XCx9noGIMzDxGYkg71tijfaKSBg8HCgLc7bZA8XYfGfawasqcycMwXTg6XJ1dlvOLVtz14y6xuXCqM/s1600/Moonphases.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6RxhuvmtG4VkQ8t7p2te3ngxQllOOwN7qi4UYs38GKYUhdipjQ3gXfkdQjiR4XCx9noGIMzDxGYkg71tijfaKSBg8HCgLc7bZA8XYfGfawasqcycMwXTg6XJ1dlvOLVtz14y6xuXCqM/s640/Moonphases.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One possible solution for the right order of the moon phases. Image Credit: "The Universe at your Fingertips" and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.</span></span></td></tr>
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Janine Pforrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01420302849628597110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-37902966761963024462013-12-13T08:00:00.000-07:002013-12-13T08:25:36.353-07:00The Geminid Meteor Shower<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">We may be in the grip of some Arctic
weather here in the US right now, but if you can stand to venture outside then
the skies have a treat in store this week, in the shape of the Geminid <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower">meteor shower</a>. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hyped as the best meteor shower of any given year, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminids">Geminids</a> reaches its peak this weekend (13/14 December).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">So what is a meteor?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">They’re also known colloquially as
‘shooting stars,’ but have nothing to do with stars. A lot of things in
astronomy that are basically the same are given different names depending on
how and where we see them. Space debris is no different. A small, solid body
moving within the Solar System is known as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid"><b>meteoroid</b></a>. If that meteoroid happens to cross paths with the Earth,
it burns up in the atmosphere, creating the distinctive streak that we know as
a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor#Meteor"><b>meteor</b></a>. In exceptional cases, a
large rock might not entirely burn up, and survives intact to hit the ground.
The solid remains that hit the Earth’s surface are known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite"><b>meteorites</b></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Space is full of debris. A quick look at
the crater-covered moon is a good indicator of what the Earth might look like
if we didn’t have the atmosphere to burn up most of what might impact us, and
erosion on the ground to smooth over the damage caused by those that do. On any
clear night, if you watch a patch of sky for long enough, chances are you’ll
see a meteor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">What makes meteor showers different to
these random occurrences is that they’re highly concentrated – a lot of meteors
all originating in the same place – and that they occur regularly, at the same
time each year. This is because the Earth is moving through space as it orbits
the Sun, carving out the same path every year, and so at the same time each
year we hit the same particularly intense patches of debris.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Most of these debris patches have been left
by comets. <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/03/2013-year-of-comets.html">Comets</a> have been observed for as long as astronomical observations
have been recorded, and often viewed as divine messengers or omens. One of the
earliest recorded sightings was in China in 240BC. The same comet was also
recorded by the Babylonians and in medieval Europe, and is even featured on the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry">Bayeux Tapestry</a>. It wasn’t until 1705 that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley">Edmund Halley</a> realised these
sightings were of the same object: it now bears his name, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_comet">Halley’s Comet</a>, and
is due to pass the Earth again in 2061.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Comets are small bodies made up of ice,
rock and dust, thought to originate in the outer reaches of the Solar System.
Some of these ‘dirty snowballs’ are pushed towards the centre of the Solar
System, where they enter into highly elliptical orbits that see them pass close
to the Sun before shooting off back to the outer reaches of the Solar System.
As they approach the center of the Solar System, radiation from the Sun causes
some of the material in the comet to melt and vaporize; this gives rise to the
characteristic tail. Consequently, the tail always points away from the Sun.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Forging paths through the entire length of
the Solar System is dangerous work, and not all comets survive the journey
intact. In 1994, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9">Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9</a> collided spectacularly with Jupiter.
More recently, you may have seen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2012_S1">Comet ISON</a> in the news as it ventured into the
inner Solar System. ISON made its closest approach to the Sun (called
perihelion) on November 28<sup>th</sup> 2013, but <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fire-vs-ice-the-science-of-ison-at-perihelion">is believed to have disintegrated</a> as it whipped around the Sun.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Those that do survive their journeys,
however, are not good at cleaning up after themselves. There are still debris
trails from several comets that have crossed the path of the Earth’s orbit in
the past, and each time the Earth reaches that point in its orbit – once per
year – we collide with this debris, which burns up in the atmosphere to produce
the streaks of light we call meteors. Comet Halley mentioned above actually
intersects the Earth’s orbit twice, and its trail is believed to give rise to
both the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Aquariids">Eta Aquarids</a> in May and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orionids">Orionids</a> in late October.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The Geminids are unusual for a meteor
shower in that the origin is not actually a comet, but an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid">asteroid</a> known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3200_Phaethon">3200 Phaethon</a>. The asteroid is on an unusual orbit that brings it closer to the Sun
than Mercury, and it sheds enough material to generate the most intense meteor
shower of the year.</span></span></span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The video below from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgH8vmsvdxs&list=PL8F7BC3F1240213F5">NASA Science Casts </a>explains more about the origin of the Geminids. </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4I80ZXrXucI?list=PL8F7BC3F1240213F5" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Meteors can be seen all over the sky, but
most will appear to originate at a single point, known as the radiant. For the
Geminids, this radiant is in the constellation Gemini (which gives the shower
its name), close to the star Castor. This effect is caused by the fact that the
Earth is moving into the debris; this is the same effect used to demonstrate
spaceships moving at faster-than-light speeds in science fiction.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcR8TNXGN8hHf8LwR4OB-cGqDG7xgkDk677jCqIRWT-j1P-9HatmuUXxIdxoKibgFcZq9-2nhfaAvzo9sirbSwKUZPD2JFNpYKjYw7OBg7FtJ9gENhZY7vbp4IEi_IIhscJ5vo1dVOMJyN/s1600/stellarium-002.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcR8TNXGN8hHf8LwR4OB-cGqDG7xgkDk677jCqIRWT-j1P-9HatmuUXxIdxoKibgFcZq9-2nhfaAvzo9sirbSwKUZPD2JFNpYKjYw7OBg7FtJ9gENhZY7vbp4IEi_IIhscJ5vo1dVOMJyN/s400/stellarium-002.png" title="" width="400" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Eastern sky as seen from Austin, Texas at 9pm on Friday December 13th 2013. <br />The Geminid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini, near to the <br />star Castor. Gemini can be most easily located by finding Orion with its distinctive belt. <br />A little way over Orion's left shoulder (the red star Betelgeuse) are the two bright <br />stars Castor and Pollux. (Image credit: Stellarium)</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The Geminid meteor shower will peak on Friday and Saturday nights (December 13<sup>th</sup> – 14<sup>th</sup>), but meteors can be seen for a few days either side. The best thing about meteor showers is that no equipment is required (save something to keep you warm) – just pick a dark location and lie back so that you can see as much of the sky as possible. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Geminids regularly peak in intensity around mid-December and seem to have increased in strength in the past years.
This year, astronomers expect 120-160 meteors per hour during the peak, which would be early in the morning on Dec. 14. However, the moon is close to full during
the peak so only the brightest meteors will be easy to spot. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">For the truly dedicated, the best time to watch is an hour before dawn, when the moon will have set leaving the sky much darker. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reports say that we can still expect around 50 per hour under
the best observing conditions (clear skies, no light pollution, etc.) and
we may even be able make out their different colors (mainly white and yellow and a few
being blue, green or red).</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">And if you’re not brave enough to venture out into the cold, you can even <a href="http://events.slooh.com/stadium/geminid-meteor-shower">watch online</a>. Now that’s astronomy for the 21<sup>st</sup> century.</span></span></span></div>
Rachael Livermorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14611872297819209492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-29720068977980827722013-12-05T08:00:00.000-07:002013-12-05T08:00:09.683-07:00Astronomer of the Month - Benjamin Weiner<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each month
we will highlight a member of the CANDELS team by presenting an
interview introducing them and what it's like to be an astronomer. This
month's Astronomer is <a href="http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/">Benjamin Weiner.</a></span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3lsP0v3YGA8w6xG2jzVfQgLR-eq2BO5OqSofFu36RRhbUpFSFEE0vS7FiIETAFMfV6gzY_0pEQ-smyMhbAJMbW1C3_pviNHJCQnqGQvQnh5BdSWzFwRULzuJPs7oKCKs4iw28Kt5zHYI/s1600/Duilia.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigNe4tWTUpUD9chMZAONsyG-_lGh_2oH4PIDa9YzweHApn9nf2WHtLsFGJCy8gnXuDIWbryfvGScGYgFfHhAqlIcEAZJX0ggWML5uLRK2uc5s_nExdwBAubeRdmgPT7DkiDs5R12LvAic/s1600/DSCF8098.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigNe4tWTUpUD9chMZAONsyG-_lGh_2oH4PIDa9YzweHApn9nf2WHtLsFGJCy8gnXuDIWbryfvGScGYgFfHhAqlIcEAZJX0ggWML5uLRK2uc5s_nExdwBAubeRdmgPT7DkiDs5R12LvAic/s320/DSCF8098.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Benjamin Weiner at Las Campanas in Chile</span></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6HwBGKClWvIVFCa6gUVbSfF7JIQuQgMQPbPwVzw0oYt8-NkhtRjmUIpvfm9U4krUXfsIaxv3WFVCUlQKL0Leoxmc7URI68z5M9jV0ISKVEAbSgRx1ufPLwUC_SgoUwVMhW65UdfA9CcI/s1600/mcintosh_dan_Hellstrom_trimmed.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tell us a little about yourself!</span></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/pub/image-KGGMfteDtRwYYiEt6sgEKho8NbvN7lwQHagX9W6DNtMq7QxnKGGXLu3DNhmg7lsuofJk/steven-boada.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My name is Benjamin Weiner. I'm an Associate Astronomer (research scientist) at <a href="https://www.as.arizona.edu/">Steward Observatory</a>, which is the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, and operates several mountaintop observatories. I was born in California but grew up in Pittsburgh. I went to <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/">Swarthmore College</a>, took a couple of years off, then got a PhD in physics/astronomy from <a href="http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ast/">Rutgers</a>. I have lived in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California (both halves), Maryland and Arizona. Away from work I like to spend time hiking, running, and riding my bike.</span></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your specific area of research? What is your role within the CANDELS team? </span></span></b></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I work on several different projects -- the one most closely related to CANDELS is the nature and properties of star-forming galaxies at <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-far-away-is-this-galaxy.html">redshifts</a> 1-2, 7-10 billion year ago, essentially adolescent galaxies. By "nature" I mean we try to figure out what is the amount of gas and stars in these galaxies, how fast are they forming stars, what are the velocities of the gas - are they rotating like the Milky Way disk or more chaotic. I also study the winds (gas outflows) driven by galaxies and the link between galaxies and the circumgalactic gas probed by <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDkQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.astro.psu.edu%2Fresearch%2Fobscosm%2Fqabs.html&ei=UfWfUpfmIYbfoASb54HABQ&usg=AFQjCNH8tjL1HjRAyf_6PVORI_2T0_ejWw&sig2=3o7xhn3yM2fOwaJygOOITw&bvm=bv.57155469,d.cGU&cad=rja">quasar absorption lines</a>. And the properties of dwarf satellites of low-redshift present-day galaxies. I have also built instrumentation for ground-based telescopes, and software for reducing data.<br /><br />Within CANDELS my role is to lead the data reduction and science efforts from the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/candels-spectroscopy-infrared-grism.html">grism spectroscopy</a> observations that we do with Hubble. The main goal of these observations is to get spectra of distant <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supernovae.html">supernovae</a> and their <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/12/supernovae-part-ii-supernova.html">host galaxies</a>, but we also get spectra of other galaxies in the same field.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What made you want to become an astronomer? At what age did you know you were interested in astronomy? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I was interested in astronomy as a grade-schooler, although since I grew up in a city, didn't really get a good look at the night sky very often unless we went out of town -- I have a distinct memory of being wowed by a clear night sky with many stars when I was about 16, from a small town in Pennsylvania. I remember borrowing a small telescope from my high school physics teacher, and us trying to photograph a partial eclipse. Also of the <a href="http://www-pgss.mcs.cmu.edu/">Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences</a> summer school taking us to the <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~aobsvtry/">Allegheny Observatory</a> where we got to look at Saturn through a pretty big telescope. Even with pictures from space probes, there is no substitute for seeing the thing directly. However, I did physics in college, not astronomy, and didn't really seriously consider astronomy until my first year in grad school, when I was less motivated by the physics classes. My friend Julianne suggested, "You should try astronomy, it's more interesting and easier." So I did.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What obstacles have you encountered on your path to becoming an astronomer and how did you overcome them? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I started really doing research, rather than taking classes and doing homework, I worried about having to create my own new projects and problems to work on. It turns out that wasn't so hard. It's much harder to manage all of the projects and to know when to declare one "good enough," finish it, and move on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Who has been your biggest scientific role model and why? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have never really identified people as role models, but one of the astronomers I learned the most from, just from informal talking, is <a href="http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/users/shec">Steve Shectman</a>. I admire <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Rubin">Vera Rubin</a>'s persistence and enthusiasm, <a href="http://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/3439/">George Preston</a>'s humor, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Peebles">Jim Peebles</a>'s graciousness to younger people.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is it like to be an astronomer? What is your favorite aspect? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My favorite aspect is that we get to engage our curiosity, and that we have to confront whatever it is that the universe has decided should be physical fact. We can try to construct ideas or test certain theories, and sometimes they're right, but often nature just doesn't work the way we expect or throws us a surprise.<br /><br />My less favorite aspect -- aside from the office politics that go with any job -- is that for a discipline that grew from staring at the sky, we spend an awful lot of time inside, under artificial lights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What motivates you in your research? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I like the challenge of figuring out original ways to design observations or studies to understand astronomical objects or test models. We can't do traditional lab-style "experiments" in astronomy since everything is far away, so you have to measure effects with what nature allows you to detect. And sometimes a clever observational design means you don't need the biggest telescope or the most resources.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite astronomical facility? (This could include telescopes or super computers, for example) </span></b></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyWOcFwGluxKEdaACNC4UQdNy5SrGHcFNugoKlCvEz0LMguSQa3OBJ-urBBhcj7RhnpG5zdRtrkz1JvUghgmPoXr0S2ZvYjTyW39iCjISVaD5yKPSRo9ZfF5zqcDOg1hcpdt88Ot0Wwo/s1600/DSCF8068.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyWOcFwGluxKEdaACNC4UQdNy5SrGHcFNugoKlCvEz0LMguSQa3OBJ-urBBhcj7RhnpG5zdRtrkz1JvUghgmPoXr0S2ZvYjTyW39iCjISVaD5yKPSRo9ZfF5zqcDOg1hcpdt88Ot0Wwo/s320/DSCF8068.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Benjamin Weiner walking up to the <a href="http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/Magellan">Magellan Telescopes</a><br />at Las Campanas in Chile.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I like going to the telescope, which for me is the most romantic, and also most scenically beautiful, part of doing astronomy. It's hard to pick one favorite, but some of mine are the observatories at Las Campanas in Chile, the <a href="http://www.vla.nrao.edu/">VLA</a> in New Mexico, and the <a href="http://www.mmto.org/">MMT</a> on Mount Hopkins here in Arizona. I would really like to visit Antarctica someday but don't currently work in the areas of astronomy that would get me there.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Right now I'm mostly doing research on relatively short-term projects, but I would like to do more teaching or outreach and work on a longer term project, possibly a telescope or a survey. Both of those are planning to build things for the future, more so than hopping from one project and grant proposal to the next.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you could have any astronomy related wish, what would it be? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'd like to be able to see up close and in detail some of the things we study -- a <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/supermassive-black-holes-and-active.html">supermassive black hole</a>'s accretion region, or a distant galaxy, who wouldn't? But astronomy is not just a collection of objects, but a system of knowledge created by people, and if I could have one wish it would be that those people behave more decently to each other.<br /><br />If I could have a second wish it would be that our society would value education, research, and knowledge more highly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is your favorite, most mind-boggling astronomy fact? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That we can deduce anything at all about the nature and physics of stars, gas, dust, galaxies -- even planets around other stars -- that are so far away and that we'll never be able to touch or see in any more detail. Much of what I do is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy">spectroscopy</a>, and it's always hard to explain because it doesn't make pretty pictures. In 1859, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Kirchhoff">Kirchhoff</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bunsen">Bunsen</a> used the then-new spectrograph to show that the Sun was made of the same elements that exist on Earth. It both blows my mind that we can know that, and that we've only known it for 150 years. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is there anything else you would like for the public to know about you or astronomy in general? </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I wish we could better communicate how science is imperfect, but generally correct or workable, especially in the long run. I think the popular conception of science is too biased toward lone geniuses making huge discoveries and overturning all of what was known before. In reality we make much slower progress, and "scientific revolutions" are based on a slow accumulation of facts and ideas that gradually build a new consensus. Even Einstein was no Einstein; he built on the work of people before him and discussed many ideas with his contemporaries.<br /><br />Science doesn't know or predict everything, but the consensus is usually pretty damn reliable, especially for well studied subjects. You have to understand that science can be imperfect and largely reliable at the same time, otherwise you fall prey to hucksters claiming that scientists have got it all wrong and are covering it up. Anti-evolutionists, quack medicine scammers, and climate change denialists use these arguments, which are based on misrepresenting how science is an imperfect process that nevertheless produces useful results.<br /><br />I'm concerned that an easily distracted culture that values only short term returns isn't supporting the resources and education we need to build a long-lasting healthy society. For example, the Pennsylvania Governor's School that I mentioned going to many years back, was cancelled several years ago due to state budget cuts. It was just revived through heroic fundraising and donation efforts by some dedicated alumni. But that's not a long term solution. The society at large, through the state, needs to make it a priority to have an educated population, to value the work of teachers and people who create knowledge. Education takes people and facilities and you just can't build a stable program by cheaping out or depending on charity every year.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-65549854767800398742013-11-27T08:00:00.000-07:002013-11-27T11:19:44.699-07:00Why Should We Study Astronomy?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this video blog post, <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/search/label/Jonathan%20Trump">Jonathan Trump</a> from the <a href="http://www.astro.psu.edu/">Pennsylvania State University</a>, discusses why we should study Astronomy. This is our first video blog post - let us know what you think about the video and this format in the comments!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-13350757992419857392013-11-05T08:00:00.000-07:002014-04-03T18:05:53.277-07:00Galaxy Evolution and Gravitational Waves, Part II<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>This post is a continuation from <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/10/galaxy-evolution-and-gravitational-waves.html">Part I</a> last week.</i> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It turns </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">out that there is another way to detect </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational waves</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (GWs) without laser interferometers such as <a href="http://www.ligo.org/">LIGO</a>: once again, through </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsars</a>,<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> except this time in a way that
directly demonstrates the presence of </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational waves</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> nearby the earth. (And
it will be particularly suited for supermassive </span></span></span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black hole</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> GW detection, as I’ll explain later.) This
method is entirely different from the indirect method I spoke of earlier that won <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Alan_Hulse">Russell Hulse</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooton_Taylor_Jr.">Joseph Taylor</a> the </span></span></span><a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1993/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, but
it too relies on the fact that </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsars</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> emit very regular pulses. Imagine a
distant (single) </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsar</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> rotating like a lighthouse and sending trains of
regular pulses propagating through space and eventually reaching us. Because
the timing, and thus the distance, between lightspeed-propagating pulses is very
regular, these interstellar radio waves themselves are like a very long ruler!
Should there be a stretching of space at or around the earth, a careful </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsar</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> astronomer will find that the number of pulses received per second (typically
on the order of a thousand per second) decreases slightly, then increases
slightly, as a </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> stretches the fabric of spacetime back and
forth. (Note that the </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> I’m referring to otherwise has nothing to do
whatsoever with the pulsars being used to detect it.) This method, when it uses multiple </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsars</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, is referred
to as a <a href="http://astrobites.org/2012/11/23/the-race-to-detect-gravitational-waves-pulsar-timing-arrays/">pulsar timing array</a> (PTA), where the word “array” refers to the pulsars
timed regularly in order to look for this slight change in arrival time.
<a href="http://nanograv.org/">NANOGrav</a> (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational waves) is such
an effort underway using the <a href="http://arecibo%20observatory/">Arecibo Observatory</a> along with the <a href="http://www.gb.nrao.edu/epo/gp/">Green Bank Observatory</a> in West Virginia. </span></span></span><a href="http://nanograv.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 48px;">NANOGrav</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> is also part of a larger international effort known as the <a href="http://www.ipta4gw.org/">International Pulsar Timing Array</a>, using eight radio telescopes. (Just as a miles-long laser, in the case of </span></span></span><a href="http://www.ligo.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 48px;">LIGO</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> can be referred to as an “observatory”, so can forty pulsars spread around the
Milky Way galaxy!)</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgswZntugZwpMDXhwdSxHADY6H1o-cGjhL32h46JoSd9rgdw2ernG37nnIwHli4T-8S0YUdreqzn6DdhwFeXCY_OOltp_menCxNCWGQHfIR0C6gHgy1U0zPPkdpL6_F-ju5tuD_B91kS013/s1600/PastedGraphic-1-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgswZntugZwpMDXhwdSxHADY6H1o-cGjhL32h46JoSd9rgdw2ernG37nnIwHli4T-8S0YUdreqzn6DdhwFeXCY_OOltp_menCxNCWGQHfIR0C6gHgy1U0zPPkdpL6_F-ju5tuD_B91kS013/s1600/PastedGraphic-1-1.jpeg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Diagram of a pulsar timing array such as NANOGrav.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each line of sight to a particular pulsar (yellow) functions</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">as a "lever arm" with which to measure waves in space-time</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(i.e. the hills and valleys in the green grid).</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">As said before, individual pairs of merging supermassive </span></span></span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black holes</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> are unlikely to produce </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational waves</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> we can detect here on
earth. But it turns out that the sum total of all merging </span></span></span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black holes</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> throughout a giant volume of space stretching back to about one half of the universe’s
elapsed history, produces a combined GW background that can be
detected. Thus, there would be </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational waves</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> coming equally from all
directions in the sky. (This is the </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> equivalent to the
<a href="http://www.cta-observatory.org/?q=node/85">extragalactic background light</a> or EBL, which is the uniform “glow” in the night
sky due to numerous unresolved individual galaxies. <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/05/about-candels-blog.html">CANDELS</a> has also
contributed to studying the EBL, <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/07/candels-and-the-ebl.html">as described here</a>. See also the <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2013/09/measuring-all-light-since-big-bang-with.html">recent posting on the EBL</a>.) </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What does this have to do with galaxies? A lot, because it
turns out that there is a very close correlation between the rates at which smaller
galaxies merge to form larger galaxies, and the (relative) rates at which small
supermassive </span></span></span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black holes</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (SMBHs) merge to become more massive (single) SMBHs. Because most
galaxies have a SMBH at the center, if two galaxies merge, then eventually
their central </span></span></span><a href="http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black holes</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> will also undergo a merger. If one wants to predict
the expected </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> background, then, one needs to look carefully
at what galaxy evolution simulations have to say. Carefully adding up the
number of galaxy mergers over cosmic time leads to a prediction of how
intense the </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> background due to SMBHs should be.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">As it turns out, doing this calculation reveals that the strongest
part of the </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> background should be at long periods – where a
single oscillation takes greater than five years! Fortunately, </span></span></span><a href="http://astrobites.org/2012/11/23/the-race-to-detect-gravitational-waves-pulsar-timing-arrays/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 48px;">pulsar timing arrays</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> such as </span></span></span><a href="http://nanograv.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 48px;">NANOGrav</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> will be able to observe these very slowly vibrating
(i.e. “nanohertz”) waves. This is because laser interferometers cannot remain
stably phase locked for decades at a time. Millisecond </span></span></span><a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pulsars</a>,<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> however, often
do remain stable clocks (and thus rulers) for this length of time. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Should the SMBH </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational wave</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> background be detected, it
will be a direct measurement of the galaxy merger rate across cosmic time. This
information could then be used to go back and make an even better computer
simulation of galaxy evolution.</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjaNg4pSZVoYaAN9g72BlwSl3V-UECbttdKxo_o6urdYTqkajm7curBLUhg-q_hbVj_OzYrz4iJKTLCpAFHchq781_aB3kUVCRUjuAq7RhLlxSQEAUBHKjgVxVPRnVuY5Fua6oevBWgYov/s1600/PastedGraphic-3-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjaNg4pSZVoYaAN9g72BlwSl3V-UECbttdKxo_o6urdYTqkajm7curBLUhg-q_hbVj_OzYrz4iJKTLCpAFHchq781_aB3kUVCRUjuAq7RhLlxSQEAUBHKjgVxVPRnVuY5Fua6oevBWgYov/s1600/PastedGraphic-3-1.jpeg" height="256" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Green Bank Telescope in Green Bank, WV.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Along with the Arecibo Observatory, astronomers</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">hope to detect gravitational waves emitted by</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">supermassive black holes in the centers of merging galaxies</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In other words, all roads lead back to galaxies. At the time
of this writing, a new study has been released from the <a href="http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/array/">Parkes Pulsar Timing Array</a> in Australia, which uses its pulsar timing measurements to rule out
models of galaxy evolution in which galaxy (and thus SMBH) mergers happened
very late in cosmic history. (See here: </span><a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4569" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4569</a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">)
It will be interesting to see what new limits on </span></span></span><a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gravitational waves</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> will come
about in the next few years. Or even better, a detection!</span></span></span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-83934347931809086452013-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:002013-11-01T08:00:03.719-07:00Kitt Peak REU and Working with CANDELS<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9CBQr-B1oIpNUnnQBhIe2b6sgxEwWyvXLuWQwVP2zxrsQiGMS-8yvJi-BGNhO5hYdzGGVoNcKM2jZlDENz0PSdlv7uqZUpYBznG_5KqBaZ7QrfcpjKdyzSkWhEYoUxoR-28k5GHcOoBMc/s1600/550239_10200458352680223_1152761463_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9CBQr-B1oIpNUnnQBhIe2b6sgxEwWyvXLuWQwVP2zxrsQiGMS-8yvJi-BGNhO5hYdzGGVoNcKM2jZlDENz0PSdlv7uqZUpYBznG_5KqBaZ7QrfcpjKdyzSkWhEYoUxoR-28k5GHcOoBMc/s200/550239_10200458352680223_1152761463_n.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hi! My name is Kirsten Blancato and I am an astronomy and physics major at <a href="http://www.wellesley.edu/">Wellesley College</a>. This past summer, I had the exciting privilege of being a part of the 2013 Kitt Peak National Observatory Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) <a href="http://www.noao.edu/kpno/reu/">program</a>. For twelve weeks, I worked with CANDELS team member Jeyhan Kartaltepe at the <a href="http://www.noao.edu/">National Optical Astronomy Observatory</a> in Tucson, Arizona. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Working at the National Observatory was truly an amazing experience. I have been in interested in astronomy since I was a child and being able to study astronomy in college has been a dream come true. I was thrilled when I was accepted to work at NOAO the summer after my sophomore year. I had always heard about the amazing work going on at Kitt Peak and could not wait to be there.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizdBgQ1EdoRaAGhy0XBJWfoD2BrEgeaF-av3h32G84jV81AtQU2G9euZHMoR8U0WkHrgLBXIDSJmCWl6HciyWnnPV3SvVk1zErCuGJmBkMBUT6cpJXQZESmgRHdjoa_ym-canJ9rolYRIY/s1600/1044513_10201501801925802_1697942227_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizdBgQ1EdoRaAGhy0XBJWfoD2BrEgeaF-av3h32G84jV81AtQU2G9euZHMoR8U0WkHrgLBXIDSJmCWl6HciyWnnPV3SvVk1zErCuGJmBkMBUT6cpJXQZESmgRHdjoa_ym-canJ9rolYRIY/s320/1044513_10201501801925802_1697942227_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kitt Peak from the Mayall 4-meter telescope<br />Image credit: Kirsten Blancato</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In addition to working on a research project with an astronomer at NOAO, the REU program included many activities including field trips to observatories, observing time at <a href="http://www.noao.edu/kpno/">Kitt Peak</a>, and many interesting astronomy lectures. We spent a week in New Mexico, where we visited the National Solar Observatory at <a href="http://nsosp.nso.edu/">Sacramento Peak</a>, the <a href="http://www.sdss.org/">Sloan Digital Sky Survey</a> at <a href="http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/">Apache Point Observatory</a>, and my favorite of all - <a href="http://www.vla.nrao.edu/">The Very Large Array</a>. Each student also had five nights of observing on Kitt Peak. For a few days at a time we would live on the mountain, observing at night and sleeping during the day. We were able to observe with the <a href="http://www.noao.edu/kpno/40th/2.1m.html">2.1 meter </a>telescope both in the optical and in the IR. It was great to meet so many different types of astronomers both while observing and visiting observatories.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But for a majority of the twelve weeks, I was working at the NOAO offices in Tucson with Jeyhan Kartaltepe. I did not know much about extragalactic astronomy before this summer, but was immediately amazed by CANDELS and all of the great science that is being done by the team members. My project focused on high redshift galaxies and how <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-do-we-measure-galaxy-morphology.html">morphology</a> can be used to identify mergers at high redshifts. <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/06/cosmic-collisions-galaxy-mergers-and.html">Galaxy mergers </a>are thought to play a critical role in <a href="http://candels-collaboration.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-role-of-mergers-in-galaxy-evolution.html">galaxy evolution</a>. In the early universe, when everything was closer together, there were many young disk galaxies. As time went on, galaxy collisions eventually formed elliptical galaxies, which are much more common in the local universe. But before we can better understand how galaxies have evolved since the beginning of the universe, we need to be able to identify galaxy mergers at higher redshifts. And this is what my summer work focused on!</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HFgB6w3iOt4LyD-XbNpcdd7UiZpNbr2oHns1_onN9WtjSGPSHtkhV-V1CimXQ9MOB9TiEu925alXSbVKZxZEapL-3BMKpmhhqdn7z9BIrvcJCszYHymScgMIbvBFdN017DoThvUYWL-c/s1600/highz_mergers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HFgB6w3iOt4LyD-XbNpcdd7UiZpNbr2oHns1_onN9WtjSGPSHtkhV-V1CimXQ9MOB9TiEu925alXSbVKZxZEapL-3BMKpmhhqdn7z9BIrvcJCszYHymScgMIbvBFdN017DoThvUYWL-c/s1600/highz_mergers.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Images of high redshift galaxy mergers<br />Image Credit: <a href="http://jeyhan.us/">Jeyhan Kartaltepe</a></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Using many different data sets from CANDELS, I compiled a data set of around 22,000 galaxies from the GOODS-S, UDS, and COSMOS fields. For each of the 22,000 galaxies, we have visual classification information, redshifts, and several different image statistics. The main problem with identifying high redshift galaxy mergers is that mergers features are much fainter at these distances, making it much harder to see features such as tidal arms. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">While automated methods for picking out mergers have been developed for low redshift (z < 1) galaxies</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, more work needs to be done to develop a successful automated method that picks out high redshift (z > 1) mergers. This summer, we looked at how well visually classified mergers and other morphological features were picked out by the different image statistics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I had a great time learning about galaxy mergers and evolution and at the end of the summer realized that twelve weeks goes by pretty fast. After the twelve weeks, I had more questions and more things I wanted to explore than I did at the beginning of the summer. I am definitely excited to hear about all of the science that will result from CANDELS and NOAO in the future.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After my summer at NOAO and working with CANDELS, I am very excited to continue on in astronomy. This spring, I will be studying astrophysics abroad at the University of St. Andrew's in Scotland and will then return to Wellesley for my senior year. After that, I definitely plan to attend graduate school in astronomy.</span></span></div>
Kirsten Blancatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177182641034177792noreply@blogger.com0