Day 18

This morning, I read a paper on finding nearby, young, low-mass stars. It was interesting and it will help me with what I'm working on now. The process described in the paper for finding the stars is very similar to what I'm doing, except it is much more in-depth and they use UV's instead of X-ray's. I also learned a lot from the paper too like the difference between the proper motion, radial velocity, and space velocity of a star, which confused me for awhile.

Coffee time was quite amusing today. Evelyn and I insisted on going even though it was down pouring . . .we got soaked on the way there! Of course, it completely stopped raining five minutes after we arrived. Anyways, neither Matt, Evelyn or I had enough money to buy anything on our own, so we pooled our change to buy a cookie. After our cookie, we were all craving milk but a small glass cost two dollars and we only had 1.75. So we played the trivia game where if you win, you get half off your drink, but if you lose you have to put 50 cents into the tip jar. Luckily, the cashier felt bad for us and gave us a hint as to what the right answer was, so we were able to buy a glass of milk, success! The cookout was really fun today and we got to eat outside because it wasn't raining. In the afternoon, I started compiling slides and images that I want to incorporate into my final project.

Day 17

Today Joel informed me that V4046 Sgr and T Cha were not present in the final lists of possible companion stars that I sent him. I went back through the process on Topcat and ended up increasing the proper motion parameters to +/- 15 km/s instead of +/- 10 km/s for V4046 Sgr, and increasing the J-K magnitude parameters to .8 - 2.1 for T Cha. Joel also informed me that the companion star that we should find for TW Hya, which is called TWA 28 (brown dwarf), was not present in the final list either. I investigated and realized that TWA 28 is not in the UCAC3 table that I downloaded. Therefore, we will have to use only the PPMXL table for TW Hya so that TWA 28 is present.

For lunch today, Evelyn, Kelsey and I went to eat on these giant stairs we found in Global Village. Well, they aren't really stairs but they are right next to a staircase and look very similar to it besides for being 10 times bigger. In the afternoon, after completing what I explained above, I attended a talk about the history of imaging. I thought it was very interesting to see how imaging has evolved throughout time, because it has many practical applications in the world today.

Day 16

Today, we visited the space weather lab in the morning. It was cool and they said that they are predicting when a "storm" will hit mars in the near future. Afterwards, I spent the morning finding possible widely separated companion stars to V4046 sgr, TW Hya, T Cha, and MP Mus using Topcat. I have to download tables from the 2mass catolog and the PPMXL catolog (using the VizieR catalogue service), and then manipulate/match them to find all possible companion stars. During lunch, we watched a movie about presenting and using Powerpoint. It was very interesting and I hope I remember some of it for when I start creating my final presentation! After lunch, Joel realized that the PPMXL catalog I was using to find the proper motions of the possible companion stars was untrustworthy, so he instructed me to try using two other catalogs (Tycho-2 and UCAC2). Of course, just as I was finishing this process, he realized that I shouldn't be using those either! So I had to go back through one more time using the UCAC3 catalog which (I hope) is the correct one.

Day 15

Today, Joel gave me a project to work on while Rudy is gone. I'm not sure if it exactly relates to what my final project will be, but if I get enough done with it before Rudy comes back, maybe I will present it along with my final project. Basically, I am now working with very young stars, instead of PN (dying stars). I am trying to find widely separated companion stars to certain binary systems. Using Topcat, I first find all of the 2mass sources within 15 arcmin of the binary star. Then I limit the results by only selecting the sources with a K magnitude of less than 12, and a J-K magnitude between .8 and 1.2. Next, I load a table of all of the PPMXL(position and proper motion catalog) sources within 15 arcmin of the binary onto Topcat. Finally, I match the the limited 2mass table with the PPMXL table and choose the stars closest to the target (binary) star that could be a widely separated companion star. I love my job!

Day 14

Today we went on our first field trip to Rochester Precision Optics! To my surprise, a party bus picked us up . . .and we toured their manufacturing building and saw how they made lenses. Afterwards, we all went to pizza hut for lunch. When we got back to RIT, Joel instructed me to do some research on previously observed x-ray emitting planetary nebulae. I made an excel sheet with the name of the PN, the X-ray observatory used, the count rate, the observed flux, and a reference from the paper in which it was published. In the process, I learned a lot about other X-ray observatories used other than Chandra, including XMM newton, Exosat, Rosat, and Einstein. According to Wikipedia, Rosat will likely not entirely burn up when re-entering the earth's atmosphere, and parts of it will hit earth sometime between October and December this year! I really hope Wiki is wrong in this case!

Day 13

Today was a good day! In the morning I did some tutorials on ImageJ. I think it is very similar to photoshop but meant for astronomy and other scientific applications. I'm not really sure what exactly I'm supposed to be learning on it though because I'm not sure yet how I will be using it. We visited Matt and Jason's lab today. As far as I understand, they are improving a program that projects an image of the sun with different wavelengths onto what looks like an enormous beach ball. Also you can use Wii remotes to spin the projection of the sun around and click on different points to learn fun facts about it. It was pretty cool! The cookout today was really fun and we played a very entertaining game of apples to apples. Also, we played frisbee for awhile which was interesting because I am not a very gifted frisbee-thrower. or catcher. Anyways, after lunch I went back to working with ImageJ and researching the chemical makeup of PN. Monday I'm going to ask Joel for some direction on what to do next!

Day 12

Today I spent the morning just researching planetary nebulae and astronomy in general. It was extremely hot (almost 100 degrees!) when we went to coffee so I got a mango-strawberry smoothie. For lunch we ate outside in some shade so we wouldn't melt. In the afternoon, I downloaded ImageJ because Rudy says I will need to use it in the future. Unfortunately he is leaving for the next two weeks so I'm going to be kinda on my own for a little. However, he said Dan and Joel will help/instruct me while he is gone. My task now is to explore ImageJ and become more comfortable and fluent with the program. So far I've taken a few tutorials online, but I have a lot more learning to do!