Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

Brightening Of The Bridge: Reflections Of A Past Sgr A* Outburst In Galactic Center Molecular Clouds, Nathalie Kanoelani Takiko Jones

Senior Projects Spring 2021

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is located more than 200,000 trillion km from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. At the very center of our galaxy is a super-massive black hole called Sagittarius A$^{*}$. The black hole is surrounded by many interesting objects, including molecular clouds. Molecular clouds are large, cold clouds of gas in which stars are formed. Telescopes like NuSTAR have observed X-rays (radiation 10,000 times higher in energy than visible light) coming from these molecular clouds. Since cold gas cannot create such high energy emission by itself, there must be some external source of radiation interacting …

A Detailed X-Ray Analysis Of The Cold Front In Relics Cluster A2163, Anne Poy

CMC Senior Theses

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. Studying them can teach us about how they merge and grow, which in turn provides unparalleled information about the history of the evolution of the Universe. X-ray observations of galaxy clusters have uncovered substructure in the hot, X-ray emitting gas known as the intracluster mediums (ICM). Substructure indicates that the ICM has been churned up, possibly by a significant off-axis merger event. This substructure includes cold fronts, sloshing spirals, and shocks. We present deep Chandra observations of the merging cluster Abell 2163. We investigate the global spectrum and find …

A Multi-Wavelength Study Of The Disk Winds And Their Role In The Agn Studies, Maryam Dehghanian

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are located at the centers of massive galaxies and are the most luminous objects in the universe. Each AGN embeds a super-massive black hole which produces outflows of gas, or winds. These winds are important because they provide a reasonable physical basis for the connections between the black hole and the properties of their host galaxy. While AGNs have been extensively studied, several fundamental questions about them are yet to be answered. These include the structure and dynamics of the central source and their winds, and questions regarding the evolution of these galaxies.

NGC 5548 is …

Axial Symmetry Tests Of Milky Way Disk Stars Probe The Galaxy's Matter Distribution, Austin Hinkel

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

In Galactic dynamics, various assumptions have been employed for mathematical ease. These assumptions are approximately valid, but departures reveal perturbations on our Galaxy. In this dissertation, we select a complete, Gaia DR2 data set, and using this data, we find evidence for axial symmetry breaking in the Galaxy, away from the spiral arms and the Galactic bar. This asymmetry is compatible with a prolate dark matter halo tilted with respect to the disk, with a long axis pointing in the direction of the Magellanic Clouds, and this matches an inventory of nearby torques. These asymmetries vary North and South of …

Near-Infrared And Visible Opacities Of S-Type Stars: The B¹Π—X¹Σ⁺ Band System Of Zro, Jason J. Sorensen, Peter F. Bernath

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The ZrO B¹Π—X¹Σ⁺ transition is an important opacity source in the near-infrared and optical spectrum of S-type stars. The 0–0, 0–1, 0–2, 1–0, 1–2, 1–3, 2–0, 2–1, 2–3, 2–4, 3–1, 3–4, and 4–2 bands of the ⁹⁰Zr¹⁶O B¹Π—X¹Σ⁺ transition are reanalyzed using a high-temperature (2390 K) high-resolution (0.04 cm−1) emission spectrum collected at the National Solar Observatory (Kitt Peak). A modern spectroscopic analysis was performed using the PGOPHER program to provide updated spectroscopic constants and to produce a high-precision line list with line strengths based on an …

Simulating Systematic Errors In Exoplanetary Transits For The James Webb Space Telescope, David C. Wright Iii

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a next-generation space telescope that will be capable of making transformative observations of planetary transits. As its launch date grows ever closer, it becomes imperative that astronomers have access to accurate simulations of JWST observations in order to best plan observations and devise data analysis pipelines. Unfortunately, available simulation tools do not provide the most accurate or realistic simulations, including noise and systematic errors. In this thesis, I present an open-source time-domain simulator of planetary transits that is capable of accurately modeling these effects in observations made by JWST.

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (Gama): The Interplay Between Galaxy Mass, Sfr, And Heavy Element Abundance In Paired Galaxy Sets, L. E. Garduno, M. A. Lara-Lopez, O. Lopez-Cruz, A. M. Hopkins, M. S. Owers, K. A. Pimbblet, Benne Holwerda

Faculty Scholarship

We study the star formation rate (SFR), stellar mass (M), and the gas metallicity (Z) for 4636 galaxy pairs using the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. Our galaxy pairs lie in a redshift range of 0

Pulsar Noise Processes And Emission Physics, Brent Jacob Shapiro-Albert

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Precision pulsar timing can be used to study many different astrophysically interesting phenomena, from the emission mechanism of pulsars to the detection of nanohertz gravitational waves. These analyses span topics such as studying the single pulses of pulsars and analyzing years of pulsar timing data from pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). Single-pulse studies allow us to glean information on the emission physics of pulsars on their shortest timescales, while PTA observations of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) allow us to not only study the pulsars themselves, but also probe the interstellar medium (ISM) and constrain the noise in the data for precision pulsar …

Searching Harder, Localizing Better, Classifying Faster: Optimizing Fast Radio Burst Detection And Analysis, Kshitij Aggarwal

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Fast Radio Bursts (or FRBs) are millisecond-duration transients of extragalactic origin. They exhibit dispersion caused by propagation through an ionized medium, and quantified by Dispersion Measure (DM). Around 800 FRBs (24 repeaters) have been discovered; so far, 24 FRBs have been confidently associated with a host galaxy. In this thesis, we discuss multiple new FRB search and analysis techniques and the corresponding tools that enable us to search for FRBs harder, localize them better, and classify candidates faster.

We discuss five open-source software suites that can be used in FRB analysis. These suites are used to distinguish between FRBs and …