Paper

“Evidence for the alignment of quasar radio polarizations with large quasar group axes” by Pelgins and Hutsemekers.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03937v1

Paper

“A Population of Short-Period Variable Quasars from PTF as Supermassive Black Hole Binary Candidates” by Charisi et. al.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01020v1

Paper

“The different baryonic Tully-Fisher relations at low masses” by C. B. Brook, I. Santos-Santos, and G. Stinson

http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.06595

Paper

“Shock Breakout and Early Light Curves of Type II-P Supernovae Observed with Kepler” by P. M. Garnavich et. al.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05657

Paper

“An accurate measurement of the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation with heavily gas-dominated ALFALFA galaxies” by E. Papastergis et. al.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.09087v1

Paper

“From Spin Noise to Systematics: Stochastic Processes in the First International Pulsar Timing Array Data Release” by L. Lentati et. al.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05570v1

Summary

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is a fellowship awarded to first and second year research-based Master’s and PhD students in STEM fields. The fellowship’s purpose is “to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States”. The fellowship is limited to US citizens, and leans in favor of women, underrepresented minorities, persons with disabilities, and veterans. Roughly 2000 new awards are granted annually, with funding lasting for three years.

Primary Area of Research

Detector development.

Massive stars.

Bio

Manuela Campanelli is the director of RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG). She obtained her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bern in 1996. Her research includes strong-regime general relativity, numerical relativity, and binary black holes.

Her research group, which now resides at the CCRG, had its claim to fame in 2006, when they published their “breakthrough” paper, Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries without Excision. This paper was recognized in APS’s “General Relativity’s Centennial”, a collection of landmark papers in relativity, over the century following the birth of GR.

Dr. Campanelli is also an ethical vegetarian, and has three dogs.

Paper

“Hydrogen Clouds from Comets 266/P Christensen and P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs) are Candidates for the Source of the 1977 ‘WOW’ Signal” by Evan Davies

http://planetary-science.org/hydrogen-clouds-from-comets-266p-christensen-and-p2008-y2-gibbs-are-candidates-for-the-source-of-the-1977-wow-signal/

Link to slides for talk.

Link to slides for 60 second talk.

Paper

“A precessing molecular jet signaling an obscured, growing supermassive black hole in NGC1377?” by Aalto et al.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08827v1.pdf

Paper

“Jet Signatures in the Spectra of Accreting Black Holes” by Riordan, Pe’er, and McKinney

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08860v1.pdf

Paper

“The Age and Structure of the Galactic Bulge from Mira Variables” by Catchpole et al.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.03295.pdf

I have updated my proposal from last time.

I had mistakenly chosen a telescope at CTIO, when I had meant to choose one at KPIO.

I am also now restricting myself to the V- and I-bands.

In calculating the needed exposure times, I have assumed the brightness is constantly its faintest (4.37 mag), the highest airmass (14), a seeing of 10 arcseconds, and a constant lunar phase of 7 days to new moon (half moon). I give room to obtain an SNR of 500. Based on these results, I find that the necessary exposure times are 0.04 seconds for the V-band, and 0.02 seconds for the I-band. Allowing for some time to change filters, I estimate that we may take 1 image every 5 minutes, and 1 image in both filters every 10 minutes.

Paper

“Period change and stellar evolution of beta Cephei stars” by Neilson and Ignace.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.05433.pdf

I have put together the beginning of an observing proposal, wherein I will observe the prototypical Cepheid variable star, delta-Cephei, for two weeks.

The proposal can be found here:

• PDF
• TeX

Assignment Description

• write a computer program which finds prime numbers between 2 and 100
• write a “manual page” describing how to run your program
• bring the manual page and (if possible) a laptop to the class meeting next Monday, so that you and others can run the program

Paper

“A Machine Learning Technique to Identify Transit Shaped Signals” by Thompson et al.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.00041.pdf

Summary

Supervised machine learning is used to automatically identify expolanets from Kepler light curves.

Paper

“Long-term optical flux and colour variability in quasars” by Sukanya et al.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.05560.pdf