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Full-Text Articles in Astrophysics and Astronomy
Creating A Sample Of Off-Color Galaxies Using Big Data Tools, Christopher Becker
Creating A Sample Of Off-Color Galaxies Using Big Data Tools, Christopher Becker
Honors Program Theses
This thesis begins an investigation into the presence of off-colored galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Through establishing the emergence and history of Astroinformatics, the thesis introduces the concepts surrounding both off-color galaxies and the Big Data tools helpful in analyzing the data to find them. A discussion of initial implementation methods and revised implementation due to difficulties with previous plans follows. Results are presented, with well in excess of 500,000 candidates for off-color galaxies present in the sample. Conclusions are then drawn regarding such a large sample and the implications this may have on the conventional understanding of …
Data Mining By Grid Computing In The Search For Extrasolar Planets, Oisin Creaner [Thesis]
Data Mining By Grid Computing In The Search For Extrasolar Planets, Oisin Creaner [Thesis]
Doctoral
A system is presented here to provide improved precision in ensemble differential photometry. This is achieved by using the power of grid computing to analyse astronomical catalogues. This produces new catalogues of optimised pointings for each star, which maximise the number and quality of reference stars available. Astronomical phenomena such as exoplanet transits and small-scale structure within quasars may be observed by means of millimagnitude photometric variability on the timescale of minutes to hours. Because of atmospheric distortion, ground-based observations of these phenomena require the use of differential photometry whereby the target is compared with one or more reference stars. …