Meet our STARTastro Research Mentors!

This project will use the TNG-Cluster simulation to investigate galaxy protoclusters—massive overdensities in the distant universe that will collapse into galaxy clusters by the present day. Many open questions remain regarding protoclusters, such as whether they are rich or poor in metals, and whether these early, dense environments suppress star formation in their constituent galaxies.

The student will be provided with a dataset containing 352 galaxy protoclusters, with properties such as star formation rates, metallicities, sizes, and stellar masses, spanning 12 billion years of cosmic time. The student will perform a population analysis of the galaxies within the protoclusters to explore how star formation, galaxy sizes, stellar masses, and metal content vary with the protocluster’s evolutionary stage, the mass of its descendant cluster at z=0, and local galaxy density variations within the protocluster.

This project aims to help make simulated-driven predictions for future observational studies of large, homogeneously selected protocluster samples, to better understand how the densest regions in the early universe influence galaxy formation. 

The student will be asked to participate in a COSI Data Challenge, designed to test the scientific data analysis pipeline on simulated astrophysical data in preparation for COSI's launch in 2027. 

The detection of gravitational waves from binary black hole (BBH) mergers has provided unprecedented insights into the population and origin of black holes. However, the origin of these BBHs remains an open question especially early in the Universe, with

two possible formation channels being isolated binary stellar evolution and primordial black holes (PBHs). This project aims to compare the BBH merger rate and mass distributions for these two scenarios using state-of-the-art population synthesis models and observational data. We will explore how the merger rate evolves with redshift for both channels and investigate the implications for BBH observations with future GW detectors.

Scholars will evaluate infrared spectra of brown dwarfs obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope to characterize their physical properties. Research tasks will include basic spectral analysis, spectral model fitting, and machine learning algorithms.

We have observed the 18cm OH spectral line to trace the diffuse molecular medium of 

the Perseus Molecular Cloud in one radial strip. Existing data from HI (diffuse atomic gas) and CO (dense molecular gas) alone do not appear to trace the transition-zone of the ISM between these two extremes. We predict that the CO-bright portions of these clouds will also be bright in OH, and that our OH radial profiles will trace the ""CO-dark"" portion of these clouds radially until the gas becomes mostly atomic. The student and I will be measuring the 3D dust, OH, HI and CO profiles through specific sightlines in the Perseus Cloud, measure their Gaussian properties of the line and compare how much gas is traced by each tracer, fully sampling the multiphase properties of the gas.

Through this project, the student will attempt to answer the question: how does the size and charge distribution of the population of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) change in different galactic environments? In answering this question, the student will develop skills in python, specifically the SciPy, NumPy, and PyPlot packages, in addition to GitHub and terminal commands. We have a large sample of spectral data including the nearby Photodissociation Region (PDR), N13, in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) observed with JWST and a large range of environments observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The project will begin with extracting spectra from spectral data cubes, and build up to applying the powerful spectral decomposition tool PAHFIT with pixel-by-pixel analysis. By studying the ratio of emission features from PAHs, we can understand key players of the energy balance of the interstellar medium in a range of nearby galaxy environments.

Supernovae are the explosions of certain types of stars at the ends of their lives. By studying these explosions, we can learn about the extreme physics involved in stellar evolution and how stars enrich the environment around them, including by the formation of heavy elements required for planets and life. Day-to-day work would involve taking measurements from images and spectra of supernovae and comparing these to theoretical models.

Over the past few years, the groundbreaking detections of gravitational wave signals from merging binary black holes and neutron stars by LIGO/Virgo have opened a new window to the cosmos. One key question regarding these gravitational wave sources concerns the nature of their origin. Dynamical formation in dense stellar environments like globular clusters has emerged as an important formation channel, corroborated by recent numerical simulations and observational indications showing globular clusters contain dynamically significant populations of stellar-mass black holes throughout their lifetimes. For this project, we will use N-body simulations of globular clusters to investigate the formation of black hole binary mergers in these systems. The student will also work closely with Professor Floor Broekgaarden at UCSD.

In this project, the student will compare the reported Class 0/I disk masses in the literature with the masses of exoplanets from various surveys (including microlensing surveys probing putative free-floating planets) to determine whether there is enough mass budget in nature to explain the currently observed total exoplanetary population, accounting for the efficiency at which a given disk can transform solids into planets.

NASA's TESS mission (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has been providing photometric data for bright stars across most of the sky for the past seven years.  The primary mission of TESS is to look for transiting exoplanets, but owing to the nature of the data many other types of science can be done.  For the STARTastro program, the student will work with the mentor and search for transiting circumbinary planets (these are planets that orbit both stars in a binary system).   Over the years a large catalog of eclipsing binaries (these are binaries whose orbits are seen nearly edge-on from Earth and as a consequence the two component stars periodically eclipse each other) has been constructed, and the light curves of these eclipsing binaries need to be inspected for the characteristic transits that could indicate a circumbinary planet. In addition, if time permits, other projects involving eclipsing binaries can be done, such as finding the masses and radii of the component stars in newly discovered systems.

Dwarf galaxies are fundamental building blocks of larger galaxies, yet their interstellar medium (ISM) remains complex and dynamic. These galaxies are characterized by high HI content but low dust and metal abundances, making them key laboratories for studying star formation and chemical evolution in metal-poor environments. In this project, the student will analyze archival JWST, Keck, and VLA observations to investigate the dust, metal, and gas content of nearby dwarf galaxies. This work will help answer broader questions, such as how dwarf galaxies evolve chemically and what factors regulate their ISM properties. Potential avenues for exploration include comparing dust-to-gas ratios, examining metallicity gradients, and investigating neutral & ionized gas kinematics.

As a planet passes between a star and our line of sight it blocks a portion of the starlight producing a dip in the star’s brightness which we can measure. We call this method transit photometry. Transiting exoplanets constitute the majority (∼ 74%) of currently known exoplanet systems. They have provided invaluable insights into the formation, demographics and compositions of planets in our galaxy. Nevertheless transits are often challenging to detect. For example, a 1% change in the measured light corresponds to a Jupiter mass planet, and 0.01% for an Earth-like planet. Achieving high photometric precision is imperative and this is particularly difficult from the ground, where for bright targets atmospheric scintillation (i.e. intensity fluctuations due to the atmosphere) is the dominate noise source. We are investigating the feasibility of using adaptive optics (AO), a system that corrects for atmospheric turbulence in real time, to mitigate this challenge. The mentee will reduce and analyse AO and imager data from the 3.5m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory or Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics  (SCExAO) data to assess the achievable photometric stability. 

This project utilizes the MESA code to simulate protostars undergoing rapid mass accretion (dM/dt ≥ 0.001 Msun/yr). We will explore variable accretion rates informed by numerical simulations of massive star formation. Additionally, we will investigate extreme accretion scenarios relevant to starburst galaxies and the early Universe. This research aims to deepen our understanding of massive star formation under diverse accretion conditions.

You will investigate data taken with the 40-inch Nickel Telescope at Lick Observatory to try and find transiting planets. All observations include a planetary transit, but the main goal will be understanding the systematics in the data to actually detect the planet transit, and identify the mid-point of the transit. You will learn the basics of CCDs, data reduction, and high-precision photometry. There is the potential for hands-on observing experience using the Nickel telescope as part of this project.