Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

P-13 Astronomy From Ripples In Spacetime, Tiffany Summerscales

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

The LIGO and Virgo detectors have made a total of 11 confirmed measurements of gravitational waves, the faint ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Ten of these gravitational wave events were caused by the inspiral, collision, and merging of a pair of black holes and the remaining event by a pair of neutron stars. These measurements have helped us learn about the objects that produced the gravitational waves. Regular candidate detections are now shared in real time with both astronomers and the public.

Galaxy And Mass Assembly: A Comparison Between Galaxy-Galaxy Lens Searches In Kids/Gama, Shawn Knabel, Benne Holwerda

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Strong gravitational lenses are cases where a distant background galaxy is located directly behind a massive foreground galaxy, whose gravity causes the light from the background galaxy to bend around the foreground galaxy. In addition to being visually stunning, these rare events are useful laboratories for furthering our understanding of gravity and cosmology and to determine properties, such as the mass and dark matter content, of the lensing galaxies themselves. The trouble is finding enough of these strong gravitational lenses for further study. The immensity of the catalogs being collected by state-of-the-art telescopes requires equally innovative methods for interpreting that …

Investigating Fourier Coefficient Relationships Of Cepheid Variable Stars, Forrest Cronin, Siobahn Morgan

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Cepheid stars are valuable due to their usefulness in determining distances within our galaxy, and to other galaxies. Cepheid stars’ light variation can be parameterized using a Fourier series with coefficients Ai and ��i . Fourier coefficients have been shown to have trends linked to physical characteristics of Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars, such as luminosity, radius, pulsation modes and metallicity. Using data from the OGLE III and IV surveys, we determined relationships between Fourier coefficients in different photometric system and observed the influence of metallicity on the Cepheids in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The …

Spectral Analysis Of Stratigraphy At Eberswalde Crater, Mars, Cory Hughes

Scholars Week

We will analyze spectral characteristics of stratigraphy in the catchment and deposit at Eberswalde Crater, Mars. This crater is a frequent contender for the preferred destination of future Mars rover and human science missions in the search for evidence of life on the Red Planet.

An Automated Spectrogoniometer System With Planetary Science Applications, Kathleen Hoza

Scholars Week

Reflectance spectroscopy is a major technique for characterizing the composition of planetary surfaces, and has led to key findings such as the characterization of alteration minerals indicative of an aqueous, neutral-pH environment in Mars’ past. When a reflectance spectrometer collects data, it does so at some viewing geometry, which is defined by the angular relationships between the light source illuminating the surface, the target material, and the detector. In the lab, this is usually at a standard viewing geometry (e.g. incidence=0, emission=30). In situ measurements taken by spacecraft, however, may be taken at a wide range of viewing geometries. This …

Using Atran Telluric Correction To Investigate The 3Μm-Region, Lucas Trent Mcclure

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Small-bodies of the Solar System, such as asteroids, provide an abundant amount of information about planetary formation and evolution. In particular, the characterization of asteroids is vital to understanding the distribution and abundance of water throughout the Solar System. Recent findings in asteroid spectroscopy have provided evidence for the surface presence of water-ice and hydroxide, likely due to silicates on asteroid surfaces interacting with H⁺ ions from the solar wind. To investigate surface hydration, astronomers analyze the 3µm region, where an absorption feature is exhibited. Atmospheric water, however, affects the quality of the data around this particular region, but …

Dark Halos: The Windowed Power Spectrum, David Coria

Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference

Today, it is believed that approximately 80 percent of the matter that comprises the universe takes the form of dark matter--a theorized substance that interacts with “normal” baryonic matter mostly through gravitational force. Through gravitation, dark matter creates potential wells that determine the motion of stars inside galaxies and galaxies inside galaxy clusters. Dark matter accumulates and forms roughly spherical structures called “dark halos”. Most galaxies and groups of galaxies are located inside such halos. Visible matter tends to cluster inside these halos because of the higher accumulation of dark matter and deeper gravitational wells. The power spectrum is obtained …

Veritas And Fermi-Lat Observations Of Tev Gamma-Ray Sources Discovered By Hawc In The 2hwc Catalog, John Hewitt

Showcase of Faculty Scholarly & Creative Activity

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) collaboration recently published their 2HWC catalog, listing 39 very high energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-ray sources based on 507 days of observation. Among these, 19 sources are not associated with previously known teraelectronvolt (TeV) gamma-ray sources. We have studied 14 of these sources without known counterparts with VERITAS and Fermi-LAT. VERITAS detected weak gamma-ray emission in the 1 TeV–30 TeV band in the region of DA 495, a pulsar wind nebula coinciding with 2HWC J1953+294, confirming the discovery of the source by HAWC. We did not find any counterpart for the selected 14 new …

Magic And Fermi-Lat Gamma-Ray Results On Unassociated Hawc Sources, John Hewitt

Showcase of Faculty Scholarly & Creative Activity

The HAWC Collaboration released the 2HWC catalogue of TeV sources, in which 19 show no association with any known high-energy (HE; E>10 GeV) or very-high-energy (VHE; E>300 GeV) sources. This catalogue motivated follow-up studies by both the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) and Fermi-LAT (Large Area Telescope) observatories with the aim of investigating gamma-ray emission over a broad energy band. In this paper, we report the results from the first joint work between High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC), MAGIC, and Fermi-LAT on three unassociated HAWC sources: 2HWC J2006+341, 2HWC J1907+084*, and 2HWC J1852+013*. Although no significant detection …

Engaging The Greater Lafayette Community In A Journey Through The Earth Sciences: Purdue’S Eaps Earth Science Passport Day Event, Dara Laczniak, Bradley Garczynski

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Nanosat Tracking And Identification Techniques And Technologies, Mark A. Skinner

Space Traffic Management Conference

Nanosats (and CubeSats, ‘Smallsats’, etc.) are of order 10 cm in size, and are at or near the limits of what can be tracked and characterized, using existing space surveillance assets. Additionally, given the CubeSat form-factor, they are often launched in large numbers (scores), and can be virtually identical. Thus are they difficult to track and to identify.

We have identified a number of technologies that future nanosat missions could employ that would enhance the trackability and/or identification of their satellites when on-orbit. Some of these technologies require active illumination of the satellite with electromagnetic energy, either in the radio …

Dance Of Two Supermassive Binary Black Holes, Karishma Bansal

Shared Knowledge Conference

Black holes exist in a various range of masses ranging from stellar mass (~ 10 Solar Mass) to Supermassive black holes (SMBHs, million to billion Solar Mass). It is expected that as the separation between the black holes decreases, emission of gravitational waves will grow stronger, which makes binary black holes one of the most promising sources for gravitational radiation detection. Gravitational waves from merging stellar-mass black holes have recently been discovered by LIGO; however, we are yet to detect them from binary SMBHs. These massive black holes reside at the heart of most of the galaxies and when two …

Nonthermal Dark Matter From Early Matter Domination, Jacek Ksawery Osinski

Shared Knowledge Conference

Dark matter (DM) production in the early universe traditionally assumes a standard thermal history where the universe is in a radiation-dominated phase after the end of inflation until matter-radiation equality. However, the presence of additional scalar fields (which is a generic prediction of explicit string constructions) can lead to an epoch of early matter domination (EMD) that ends before the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis. Such an EMD phase has important cosmological consequences and renders thermal production of DM irrelevant. We present three scenarios for DM production involving an era of EMD: evaporation of primordial black holes into DM, DM …

The Undeniable Attraction Of Lunar Swirls, Cierra Waller, Dhananjay Ravat

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Lunar swirls are complex patterns on the Moon with distinct brightness signatures and magnetic characteristics. Current research has suggested that the formation of lunar swirls relies on local magnetic fields to shield impinging solar wind, based on a shift in electromagnetic wavelength peaks related to solar radiation and space weathering. Our research combined recent models and methods to characterize these anomalies at the surface of the Moon, exploring the effects of field strength and position. We have produced a high resolution map of a famous swirl named Reiner Gamma using magnetic dipole modeling. These maps and models are considered when …

P-43 Doing Astronomy With Gravitational Waves, Tiffany Summerscales

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

With the first detection of gravitational waves on September 14, 2015, the new era of gravitational wave astronomy began. Gravitational wave detections, along with observations made by optical telescopes, have given us new information about the universe. This includes new estimates of the numbers of black holes in the universe and their properties, as well as confirming theories about the sources of some gamma ray bursts and how those sources produce heavy elements.

Expected And Achievable Accuracy In Estimating Parameters Of Standing Accretion Shock Instability (Sasi) Fluctuations From Neutrinos And Gravitational Wave Oscillations, Colter Richardson, Jonathan Westhouse

Undergraduate Research Symposium - Prescott

Core collapse supernovae are one of the most interesting sources of gravitational waves. When the progenitor star is particularly massive, hydrodynamic instability called standing accretion shock instability can develop and it is characterized by deterministic oscillations in the gravitational wave signal as well as in the neutrino luminosity with frequencies of 100hz. In this talk we will review current efforts to extract physical information from the SASI components of the gravitational wave and enhance the detectability of gravitational waves with such components both using laser interferometers and neutrino detectors.

Modeling And Detectability Of Gravitational Wave Waveform Memory From Core Collapse Supernovae, Pedro Jesus Quinonez, Emily Grimes

Undergraduate Research Symposium - Prescott

Ever since the discovery of gravitational waves by LIGO, studying these waves have become of utmost importance. This is because gravitational waves have the potential to carry information that have remain unseen by physicist in the past. For example, take the case of a core collapse supernovae. Any information transferred through electromagnetic waves that attempts to escape the inner core of a dying star is blocked out by the intense radiation of its outer shell. For this reason, astronomers have been unable to truly study what goes in the core. However, this is not the case for gravitational waves, which …

Research In Optics For Gravitational Wave Detection, Britney Biltz, Noura Ibrahim, Brennan Moore

Undergraduate Research Symposium - Prescott

B.Biltz uses a horizontal “Zollner style” pendulum to monitor changes in the local gravitational field. The pendulum is attracted to the moon and the Sun and so, as the Earth turns, the pendulum’s equilibrium point shifts within a 24-hour period. This is an experiment designed to test the limits of such a pendulum. This sort of system may be useful as a method of monitoring and correcting for gravity gradient noise in future gravitational wave detectors.

N.Ibrahim characterizes thermo-optic noise in high-performance mirror coatings of the type used in Advanced LIGO. To characterize thermo-optic noise, she measures the change in …

Primordial Black Hole Atoms, David Zwick, Tyler Hanover, Brian Nepper

STEM Student Research Symposium Posters

Primordial black holes are thought to have been formed at the early stages of the universe in the presence of non-homogeneous density distributions of dark matter. We are working under the assumption that dark matter consists of elementary low mass particles, specifically, spin 1/2 fermions. We further assume that dark matter is electrically neutral, thus its main interaction is gravitational. We investigate dark matter spin 1/2 fermions in orbit around a black hole atom and consider mass ranges for which the quantum description is appropriate. Solutions to the Dirac equation are utilized to describe the radial mass distribution of primordial …

Spectral Mixture Modeling Using Principle Component Analysis, Joseph S. Makarewicz, Heather D. Makarewicz

Scholar Week 2016 - present

A method for modeling mixtures between two end-member spectra using principle component analysis and linear regression was presented. The presentation included results from three binary mixture data sets including orthopyroxene-clinopyroxene, kaolinite-montmorillonite, and nontronite-ferrihydrite.

Design And Evaluation Of 3d-Printed Filar Micrometer, Emily Rull

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This project sought to design and 3D-print a filar micrometer for double star measurements that amateur astronomers could produce cost effectively.

Double stars are celestial objects that allow the mass of stars to be calculated by assessing their orbits. Stellar mass affects every current model of stellar evolution, but the most accurate double star orbits can take decades to record. As a result of the long-term nature of such observations and lack of groundbreaking research in double star studies, professional astronomers are no longer focused on making these measurements. This allows amateur astronomers to pick up where professionals have left …

Shape Modeling And Boulder Mapping Of Asteroid 1992 Uy4, Nicholas Duong

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The structure and history of near-Earth asteroids are important to
study because they collide with Earth, sometimes with significant consequences for
climate and the survival of many species, including our own. If NASA is ever to deflect an asteroid on a collision course, it is crucial to know as much as possible about its size, composition, structure and boulder distribution. The boulder
distribution in turn helps to map the asteroid's gravitational field.

1992 UY4 is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1992. In August 2005, UY4 made a
``close" (for space) pass of Earth, about 15x farther than the Moon. It …

Solar Eclipse Induced Atmospheric Turbulence Effects On High Altitude Balloons, Fnu Anamika, Denise Buckner, Peter Henson, Jennifer Fowler, Nanette Valentour

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

The North Dakota Atmospheric Education Student Initiated Research (ND-AESIR) team launched a balloon during the total solar eclipse in Rexburg, Idaho. After the umbra’s passage, the balloon experienced unexpectedly high levels of atmospheric turbulence. Video footage taken from the payload displays the conditions, and analysis of flight path data models created from the iridium GPS confirm that unusually violent turbulence occurred. These forces caused the key rings holding the bottom of the parachute to the payload train to rip open; the balloon and parachute flew away and the payloads free fell to the surface from an altitude of 68,301 feet. …

Physoon - Radiation Detection In Various High Altitude Environments, Christopher Helmerich

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

Physoon is a high altitude ballooning payload designed and built by members of the Space Hardware Club for the purpose of comparing cosmic and terrestrial radiation from a variety of environmental conditions, including clear days, night times, solar events (eclipses, solar flares, coronal mass ejections), and thunderstorms. Over three design iterations, Physoon has flown eleven times with various combinations of Geiger counters sensors: a low energy Alpha-Beta-Gamma detector, an unshielded high-energy Beta-Gamma detector, and a shielded high-energy Beta-Gamma detector. One of these iterations successfully recovered data from high altitude during totality of the Great American Solar Eclipse. Another iteration was …

Calibration Of Temperature Sensors In Preparation For The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, Erick Agrimson, Kaye Smith, Ana Taylor, Vina Onyango-Robshaw, Rachel Lang, Alynie Xiong, Peace Sinyigaya, Grace Maki, Rachel Dubose, Brittany Craig, James Flaten, Gordon Mcintosh

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

In preparation for the 2017 total solar eclipse, St. Catherine University developed a calibration protocol for the temperature sensors flown during thermal wake boom experiments. The calibration method used a standard two-point technique that corrected each individual sensor for both slope and offset errors using a high quality NIST certified thermocouple as the temperature standard. Our method is not absolute but corrects each sensor relative to the NIST standard so that we feel some confidence that individual sensor variations are mitigated. In preparation for the eclipse, calibration curves were generated for over 200 individual digital and thermistor temperature sensors.

Eclipse Ballooning Stem Outreach For Elementary, Middle, And High School Education, Peter Henson, Fnu Anamika, Denise Buckner, Marissa Saad, Caitlin Nolby

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

To promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education through ballooning, the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium (NDSGC) organizes an annual Near-Space Balloon Competition (NSBC) for students in grades 6 - 12. Students across the state of North Dakota have the opportunity to launch experiments into a near- space environment. The students learn how to write proposals, design payloads, and analyze data. They learn through an active, inquiry-based style that will prepare them for real-world engineering and critical thinking jobs. In 2016, NSBC proposed Great American Eclipse as the theme for the competition, thus the students were focused on designing …

Formation Of Supermassive Black Holes In The Early Universe: High-Resolution Numerical Simulations Of Radiation Transfer Inside Collapsing Gas, Yang Luo, Kazem Ardaneh, Isaac Shlosman, Kentaro Nagamine, John Wise, Mitchell C. Begelman

Commonwealth Computational Summit

Observations of high-redshift quasars reveal that super massive black holes (SMBHs) with masses exceeding 10⁹ M_⊙ formed as early as redshift z ~ 7 [1,3,6]. This means that SMBHs have already formed ~700 million years after the Big Bang. How did such SMBHs could grow so quickly?

In this work, we use a modified and improved version of the blockstructured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code ENZO [2] to provide high spatial and temporal resolution for modeling the formation of SMBHs via direct collapse within dark matter (DM) halos at high redshifts. The radiation hydrodynamics equations are solved in …

Evolution Of Barred Galaxies In Spinning Dark Matter Halos: High Resolution N-Body Simulations At Dlx, Angela Collier, Isaac Shlosman, Clayton Heller

Commonwealth Computational Summit

Observations show that galaxies are dominated by stellar disks immersed in much more massive, slowly tumbling dark matter (DM) halos. Large fraction of galactic disks, at least 75%, are barred (see Hubble Fork on the right). Stellar bars form either via spontaneous break of axial symmetry or via galaxy interactions.

The formation and evolution of stellar bars is not fully understood. Stellar bar evolution is highly nonlinear and cannot be treated analytically. The main approach to study these disk-halo systems is via numerical simulations, whose goal is to explain why galaxies have such a wide range of morphologies as shown …

Dark Matter Halo Mass Function From Hpc N-Body Simulations, Da Bi, Isaac Shlosman, Emilio Romano-Diaz

Commonwealth Computational Summit

Dark matter (DM) dominates the matter in the Universe. Because of self-gravity, DM collapses and becomes clumpy, building the large-scale hierarchical structures. Baryons assemble within DM potential wells and form galaxies.

Because we can not directly observe DM halos, numerical simulations is the only way one can study their dynamics and other properties. Using N-body simulations, we can obtain the Halo Mass Function (HMF), which provides the abundance of DM halos as a function of their mass. The HMF depends weakly on cosmological redshift and is one of the basic tools in modern cosmology.

We use GIZMO --- a flexible, …

Evaluation Of Radiation And Design Criteria For A Lunar Habitat, Hayley E. Bower, Daniel Gomez, Antonio Bobet, Julio A. Ramirez, Shirley J. Dyke, H. Jay Melosh

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Extraterrestrial habitation has long been the object of science fiction, and experts in the fields of science and engineering have proposed many designs for a lunar base. The research conducted has focused on either structural stability, radiation protection, or meteorite-impact vulnerabilities, but rarely have these been considered together. The Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats (RETH) project aims to design a lunar habitat from a hazards perspective, considering general degradation, meteorite impacts, seismic activity, radiation exposure, thermal extremes, and geomagnetic storms in addition to the physiological, psychological, and sociological aspects of astronauts living in such a habitat. Several members of the RETH team …