These are just a few of the research projects available for Pre-MAP students:

1. Merging Supermassive Black Holes

Advisor: Tom Quinn

It is presumed that most galaxies have a large Black Hole at their center. As galaxies merge in the standard hierarchical scenario of galaxy formation, these Black Holes also can merge and grow. Furthermore, the violent dynamics of the merger will deliver a significant amount of gas and stars to the central regions of the merging galaxy, further growing the central Black Hole and fueling an Active Galactic Nucleus. Simulation of merging galaxies.

Several NASA missions will be attempting understand the physics of central Black Holes in galaxies. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) hopes to detect the gravitational radiation as these Black Holes merge, and therefore will need estimates of merger rates. Constellation-X will be observing the X-ray emission from these objects, and these observations will need to be put into a framework that includes the very dynamic nature of the galactic merging process in order to be fully understood.

In this project you will be investigating the link between the merger of the black holes and any electromagnetic signatures from the host galaxies. You will be examining the results of high resolution computer simulations of the merger event as shown in the figure, and creating simulated optical and X-ray images. By correlating these images with the time that the black holes actually merge in the simulation, you will be able to to distinguish the observational properties of the host galaxies at the time of the supermassive black hole merger from other events in the galaxy merger scenario.

2. The Death and Rebirth of Circumstellar Disks Around Massive Stars

Advisor: John Wisniewski

Some stars which are much more massive (> 15x) than our Sun are known to be rotating very rapidly, at speeds > 80-90% of the critical velocity at which gravity is balanced by centrifugal force. These stars continuously eject some of their mass; this ejecta takes the shape of a gaseous circumstellar disk around the host star. An artist's conception of a gas disk surrounding a massive B-type star.

In this project, you will be investigating a massive star which (for reasons not well understood) lost its old disk and recently started developing a new one. Your main tasks will be to a) analyze an existing spectropolarimetric dataset to constrain the time-scale of disk-loss and disk-renewal; and b) begin to characterize the fundamental properties of the disk, when it was present. This research could be easily extended into a longer-term project for interested pre-MAP student(s), with the objective of publishing the results in a major astronomy journal.

3. Searching for Star Clusters

Advisors: Julianne Dalcanton, Stephanie Gogarten

Clusters are the birthplaces of stars, but many of them do not last very long - the intense radiation from the newly-formed stars dissolves the gas in the cluster, and the stars gradually drift apart. Other clusters can survive for billions of years. Star cluster in the spiral galaxy NGC 300

The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) has Hubble Space Telescope images of many nearby galaxies of different types, with such high resolution that we can identify individual stars as far as 12 million light-years away. Finding all the star clusters in these galaxies can tell us about the rate at which clusters form in galaxies of different types, and the rate at which these clusters are destroyed.

Pre-MAP students will examine color images of the ANGST galaxies to find star clusters, and record their positions, sizes, and brightnesses. The resulting catalog of star clusters can be used to investigate the relationships between star clusters and galactic environment, and correlate our observations with images at other wavelengths, such as ultraviolet and infrared.

4. Exposing Bright X-ray sources in M31

Advisors: Ben Williams, Daryl Haggard

M31 (pictured to the left) is the nearest galaxy that is similar to our own. It therefore offers an excellent opportunity to find exotic X-ray sources, many of which contain neutron stars or black holes. Each such object offers a new laboratory for learning more about neutron star and black hole formation and the physics that drive their X-ray emission. We are part of a large international effort to find and classify these objects in M31. An X-ray image of M31 reveals its many intriguing X-ray sources.

Pre-MAP students will work with their advisor to use the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 meter telescope to obtain low resolution spectra of the optical counterparts of X-ray sources in M31. The project will involve at least one night of remote observing during which students will take optical spectra. They will then learn to process and analyze these spectra in order to determine the type of astrophysical object that produced the X-rays. This knowledge is a key step to understanding the production of X-rays from more distant galaxies as well as the production of individual X-ray sources in galaxies.

Archived projects: go here to see descriptions of past projects.