Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

Identifying And Analyzing Multi-Star Systems Among Tess Planetary Candidates Using Gaia, Katie E. Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exoplanets represent a young, rapidly advancing subfield of astrophysics where much is still unknown. It is therefore important to analyze trends among their parameters to learn more about these systems. More complexity is added to these systems with the presence of additional stellar companions. To study these complex systems, one can employ programming languages such as Python to parse databases such as those constructed by TESS and Gaia to bridge the gap between exoplanets and stellar companions. Data can then be analyzed for trends in these multi-star exoplanet systems and in juxtaposition to their single-star counterparts. This research was able …

The Loneliest Galaxies In The Universe: A Gama And Galaxy Zoo Study On Void Galaxy Morphology., Lori E. Porter

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe is comprised of galaxy filaments, tendrils, and voids. The majority of the Universe’s volume is taken up by these voids, which exist as underdense, but not empty, regions. The galaxies found inside voids are void galaxies and expected to be some of the most isolated objects in the Universe. However, their standard morphology remains poorly studied. This study, using the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) data and Galaxy Zoo survey, aims to remedy this. For completeness purposes, we use void galaxies identified by Alpaslan et al. (2014) with stellar masses (M*) of 10 …

Upcoming Solar Eclipses Worth A Trip, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Two types of solar eclipses will be visible in the United States over the next 12 months. These rare events won't take place again in the contiguous 48 states for the next twenty years and they are both worth making a trip to see.

New Physics In The Age Of Precision Cosmology, Vivian I. Sabla

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The Lambda-cold dark matter (LCDM) model has become the standard model of cosmology because of its ability to reproduce a vast array of cosmological observations, from the earliest moments of our Universe, to the current period of accelerated expansion, which it does with great accuracy. However, the success of this model only distracts from its inherent flaws and ambiguities. LCDM is purely phenomenological, providing no physical explanation for the nature of dark matter, responsible for the formation and evolution of large-scale structure, and giving an inconclusive explanation for dark energy, which drives the current period of accelerated expansion.

Furthermore, cracks …

Lesson Plans In Astronomy, Ecology And Biology, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

This document contains various lesson plan ideas for concepts within the fields of biology, ecology, astronomy, and geology.

Staerkel Planetarium Introduces A New Round Of Speakers, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Each year, the Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College hosts speakers from around the world of science. The first lecturer of this series was the late professor Jim Kaler. After providing beloved astronomy talks for thirty years, the James Kaler Science Lecture Series was renamed in his honor.

Astronomy 102 Lab: The Celestial Sphere And Coordinates, Katrina Powers

A with Honors Projects

An astronomy lab that explores introductory topics such as the celestial sphere, celestial coordinates, proper motion, and the impact of time on the location of stars in our sky. This lab is designed to be used on the program Stellarium.

The Planets, Reimagined: Translating Science Into Music, Kaitlyn Wincup

Honors Projects

Inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Planets, this project analyzed the qualitative properties of the planets in our Solar System and translated them into a composition, created by Connor Gibbs, to represent an overall aural depiction of each planet. Where Holst created an astrological depiction of each of the planets, this piece is an astronomical depiction that broadens the perspectives of its listeners.

Meteors Provide Clues Into Other Worlds, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

If you look up on a clear night without much light pollution, you should see a meteor roughly every ten minutes. Most meteors are rocks the size of a grain of sand falling from space at hypersonic speeds, and the pressure experienced as they hurtle through the atmosphere heats up the air to glow as "shooting stars."

Highlighting The Beauty Of Science, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Each fall and spring, the William M. Staerkel Planetarium hosts speakers who talk about their corner of the world of science. The James B. Kaler Science Lecture Series is named after a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois's astronomy department who delivered an annual talk for the series for about 30 years.

This academic year, the planetarium will begin the series with the premiere of a full dome show followed by a Q&A session with one of the show's producers. Tickets for Kaler Science Lectures are $2 for all attendees and are free for members of the Friends of …

Staerkel Planetarium Marking 35 Years Of Projecting The Stars, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Visitors to the Staerkel Planetarium are introduced to "Carl" when they walk in the dome. Some people mistake Carl for a telescope in an observatory, but Carl puts "stars" on the dome instead of collecting light from stars. "Carl" is the Carl Zeiss Model M 1015-star projector, an intricate piece of machinery that has been at Parkland College since the planetarium opened 35 years ago.

Using Nasa's Tess Mission To Search For Extremely Low Mass White Dwarf Stars, Corinna Peña

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Extremely low-mass white dwarf stars (ELM) are white dwarf stars with a mass lower than 0.45 solar masses that could not have evolved through normal processes within the lifetime of our universe. Therefore, these objects can only be created through a common envelope phase or a stable Roche lobe overflow while in a binary. These objects have periods between a few minutes to a few hours, so they are very short lived which makes them very rare. My goal for this project was to find these ELM stars by using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data. I analyzed this …

Electromagnetic Detectability Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes, Kaylee Grace

Honors Scholar Theses

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries can be produced by galaxy mergers and are important sources of gravitational waves. Although several binary candidates have been identified in previous work, none have yet been fully confirmed. These pairs are difficult to detect, since single accreting SMBHs can have pseudo-periodic lightcurves due to stochastic noise that can mimic the signature of binary SMBHs. The aforementioned lightcurves are the detections we classify as ”false-positive.” The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) will be a powerful new tool for detecting binary SMBHs. We determine the false-positive binary detection rate for VRO by attempting to recover sinusoidal binary …

Shining A Light On Dark Sky Week, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Have you ever seen the Milky Way? For most Americans, it is impossible to see the band of light from the galaxy outside their homes. To be able to experience the night sky as our ancestors did, we have to travel to places away from light pollution.

International Dark Sky Week, which is happening April 22-30, celebrates the night sky and offers everyone a chance to reflect on the lighting choices made around their home and in their community.

Start Making Plans For The Next Total Eclipses, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon. Normally, you would see a full Moon but Earth's shadow is capable of covering the Moon entirely, making it much dimmer. A total lunar eclipse looks red due to sunlight refracted through Earth's atmosphere.

This event is visible to anyone who can see the Moon, which could be anywhere on the nighttime side of Earth. Next month on May 15, it will be visible through most of North America if it isn't cloudy.

James Webb Space Telescope's Enlightening Journey Is Underway, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

A rocket carrying the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope launched on Christmas. Astronomers hope that the James Webb Space Telescope will provide insight about the earliest stage of the universe when it orbits about one million miles from Earth. The Staerkel Planetarium collaborated with the Illinois Space Grant Consortium to promote the launch of this revolutionary device.

Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, Anit Tyagi

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

An interview with Dr. Jennifer Hoffman.

Characterizing Agn Influence On The Calculated Metallicities Of Adjacent Star-Forming Spaxels, Aidan Khelil

Honors Papers

In this thesis, I introduce a method to identify and characterize the effects of active galactic nuclei (AGN) on the spectra of nearby star-forming regions. I analyze spatially-resolved areas of galaxies called “spaxels” within Data Release 15 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with the goal of locating those which are physically close to AGN. I find those spaxels with calculated metallicities which lie adjacent to AGN-flagged spaxels and characterize their metallicity values relative to the spaxels which are not adjacent to AGN-flagged spaxels, using a total of 11 separate metallicity calibrations. I find that the current methods to …

Deeply Learning Deep Inelastic Scattering Kinematics, Markus Diefenthaler, Abdullah Farhat, Andrii Verbytskyi, Yuesheng Xu

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

We study the use of deep learning techniques to reconstruct the kinematics of the neutral current deep inelastic scattering (DIS) process in electron–proton collisions. In particular, we use simulated data from the ZEUS experiment at the HERA accelerator facility, and train deep neural networks to reconstruct the kinematic variables Q² and x. Our approach is based on the information used in the classical construction methods, the measurements of the scattered lepton, and the hadronic final state in the detector, but is enhanced through correlations and patterns revealed with the simulated data sets. We show that, with the appropriate selection …

Impact Of Radio Frequency Interference And Real-Time Spectral Kurtosis Mitigation, Evan T. Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

We catalog the ubiquity of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) plaguing every modern radio telescope and investigate several ways to mitigate it in order to create better science-ready data products for astronomers. There are a myriad of possible RFI sources, including satellite uplinks and downlinks, cellular communications, air traffic radar, and natural sources such as lightning. Real-time RFI mitigation strategies must take these RFI characteristics into account, as the interfering signals can look significantly different at very high time and frequency resolutions.

We examine Spectral Kurtosis (SK) as a real-time statistical RFI detection method, and compare its flagging efficacy against simulated …

The Temple Of Immensity: For Choir And Electronics, Steven Naylor

Honors Projects

the temple of immensity is a composition for 16-part choir and fixed media electronics composed by Steven Naylor using astronomical data concerning the stars nearest to Earth and their properties. “The temple of immensity” is an archaic and rarely used term, defined as “the universe or the complete overhead expanse of the heavens, especially as conceived as an object of religious reverence.” This piece seeks to convey feelings of wonder and awe for outer space through the setting of an original self-composed poem and through the use of star data to determine musical aspects. The resulting 28-minute composition blends voices …

Planetarium Celebrates 50 Years Since Apollo Missions, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

It is mind-boggling how humanity went from the invention of powered aircraft to rockets carrying people safely to the Moon in fewer than 70 years. The William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions with several exhibits on these achievements.

Visitors can see "Many Inspired Steps," a pictorial timeline offering highlights of the mid-20th century space program up to Apollo 11. It includes earlier advancements of air travel and ancient mythological inspirations of human flight.

Space Science And Social Media: Automating Science Communication On Twitter, Maia Williams

Honors Projects

This project analyzes how social media is used to engage general audiences in astronomy and space science, as well as ways to improve engagement through automation. Tweets from five space science organizations were sampled. The engagement rate for each tweet was calculated from the number of interactions it received. Accounts that tweet more per day had more followers, and accounts with more followers received more interactions. This project also investigated how to build a Twitter bot to automate science communication. Using NASA Application Programming Interfaces, a Twitter bot was written in Python to tweet images taken by the NASA Mars …

Planetarium Open For Shows Once Again, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

After nearly 17 months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College has reopened for public shows.

Corrigendum: The Remote Observatories Of The Southeastern Association For Research In Astronomy (Sara), William C. Keel, Terry Oswalt, Peter Mack, Gary Henson, Todd Hillwig, Daniel Batcheldor, Robert Berrington, Chris De Pree, Dieter Hartmann, Martha Leake, Javier Licandro, Brian Murphy, James Webb, Matt A. Wood

Publications

Bill Gray of Project Pluto brought to our attention an error of 0.03° in the listed latitude of our Kitt Peak telescope. While correcting the table where this occurred, we also take the opportunity to update the instrument properties and weather statistics of our remote telescopes

Keep Watch For Two Eclipses In Next Few Weeks, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Skywatchers have a chance to see two eclipses over the next few weeks. A solar or a lunar eclipse can occur when the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon are lined up in space. During a solar eclipse, the Moon blocks sunlight from reaching Earth. When Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the full Moon in a lunar eclipse, it looks much dimmer at night and may appear red.

Variable Nature Of Accretion Disk Outflows Around Supermassive Black Holes In Active Galaxies, Mary Ogborn

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Seyfert galaxies are a sub-class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in which outflows are ubiquitously observed and thought to be produced from accretion disks surrounding supermassive black holes (SMBHs). These outflows manifest themselves as blueshifted absorption features in their X-Ray spectra (aka. warm absorbers (WAs)), allowing for spectroscopic analysis to examine the physical conditions of the constituent plasma as well as the AGN itself. In the context of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), we utilize a magnetically-driven disk-wind model that describes the behavior within the disk and to study 3 exemplary Seyfert 1 AGNs in an effort to constrain the strength of the …

Celebrating The Mars Landings, Erik Johnson

Natural Science Faculty

Last month, three robotic missions launched from different countries reached Mars, including the first successful missions sent by China and the United Arab Emirates. Along with Tianwen-1 and Hope, NASA sent a rover to Mars named Perseverance, which will soon deploy a helicopter named Ingenuity. To celebrate these arrivals, the staff of the William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College offered a series of virtual programs and videos that are still available to the public.

How And Why Mars Lost Its Water, Sana Akhter, Andre Beikircher

2021 Honors Council of the Illinois Region

The topic of this paper is to investigate how and why Mars lost its water. It is important to study the loss of water on Mars because it can give us a better understanding of how Mars once looked, if life were possible, and how it could have changed so drastically to what it is now. The paper aims to address which factors led to Mars losing its water and how long ago this happened. Using our data, we will predict how quickly Mars’ core cooled, when its magnetic field weakened, and when the water was lost. We learned that …

Concentrated Lunar Resources: Imminent Implications For Governance And Justice, Martin Elvis, Alanna Krolikowski, Tony Milligan

History and Political Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of small sites of interest on the Moon's surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. The Moon presents finite and scarce areas with rare topography or concentrations of resources of special value. Locations of interest to science, notably for astronomy, include the Peaks of Eternal Light, the coldest of the cold traps and smooth areas on the far side. Regions richest in physical resources could also be uniquely suited to settlement and commerce. Such sites of interest are both few and small. Typically, there …