Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

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 …