Browsing Astronomy by Subject "Astronomy"
Now showing items 1-20 of 53
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A New Transiting Planet Search Applied to Kepler and K2: Discovery of Hundreds of Planet Candidates, Eclipsing Binary Stars, and a Self-lensing Binary System
Since the launch of the Kepler telescope in 2009, the transit method has become the most common way to discover exoplanets. Several groups have created planet search pipelines for both the original Kepler mission and its ... -
A sub-kiloparsec scale view of star formation in M31
This dissertation examines the properties of star formation in the nearest large Milky Way- like galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Using resolved star data from the Hubble Space Telescope obtained as part of the Panchromatic ... -
Accreting Compact Objects in Technicolor: Multiwavelength Characterization of High Mass X-ray Binaries in the Local Group
High mass X-ray binaries (HMXBS) are systems that contain a compact object (neutron star or black hole) that accretes mass from a massive stellar companion. HMXBs are highly observable due to their bright X-ray luminosities, ... -
Activity and Kinematics of Cool and Ultracool Dwarfs
(2013-02-25)The ages of cool and ultracool dwarfs are particularly important. For cool M dwarfs, accurate ages combined with their ubiquity in the stellar disk could lead to a new level of precision in age dating the Galaxy. A better ... -
Algorithms, Models, and Methods for SDSS-V Wide-field Robotic Fiber Spectroscopy
The field of astronomy has entered an age of big data, and this being driven by dedicated telescopes and instruments built for the sole purpose of conducting broad surveys to catalog the night sky. The highly successful ... -
Building galaxy models with self-consistent prescriptions for stellar and nebular emission
A galaxy's spectrum is the sum of light emitted by stars and gas, modulated by intervening dust. Translating between the observed flux from galaxies and meaningful astrophysical quantities relies on ``stellar population ... -
Characterizing Eclipsing Binaries and the Population of Planets Orbiting Around Them
The majority of main sequence (MS) and pre-MS (PMS) stars reside in binaries or hierarchical multiples (Abt 1979; Duchêne & Kraus 2013). Understanding planetary processes and regimes of habitability in a general framework ... -
Drivers of Turbulence in the Neutral Interstellar Medium of Dwarf Galaxies
(2013-07-23)The cause of HI velocity dispersions in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies is often attributed to star formation, but recent evidence has shown these two quantities are not connected in regions of low star formation. ... -
The Effect of Star-Planet Interactions on Planetary Climate
The goal of the work presented here is to explore the unique interactions between a host star, an orbiting planet, and additional planets in a stellar system, and to develop and test methods that include both radiative and ... -
The Effects of Refraction and Forward Scattering on Exoplanet Transit Transmission Spectroscopy
Transit transmission spectroscopy may provide the first glimpse at the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet, and therefore the first chance to detect habitability markers and biosignatures, or signs of life. Within the ... -
Empirical Approaches to the Near-Infrared Tip of the Red Giant Branch
The infrared tip of the red giant branch (IR-TRGB) is a powerful tool for measuring distances to galaxies in the local Universe. However, establishing its absolute "anchor" with sufficient precision and accuracy has proved ... -
Exploring Habitability Markers, Biosignatures, and Their False Positives Using Spectral Models of Terrestrial Exoplanets
In the coming years and decades, we will obtain our first opportunity to spectrally characterize potentially habitable worlds outside our solar system. These planets will be at the right distance from their host star and ... -
From reionization until now: The history of the ionizing background
Ultraviolet light emitted by the first galaxies sparked the last major phase change of matter in the Universe. The bulk of gas in the Universe went from neutral to ionized, and as galaxies and quasars continued to replenish ... -
Galactic Gas Flows from Halo to Disk: Kinematics and Tomography in the Milky Way’s Low-Velocity Circumgalactic Medium
The evolution of galaxies is closely linked to the exchange of gas between their disk and the circumgalactic medium (CGM) – the massive, extended, diffuse halo of gas in which galaxies are embedded. Recent advances in ... -
A Ground-Based Search for Transit Timing Variations from the Apache Point Observatory
(2013-02-25)The following dissertation presents work done as part of a ground-based transit follow-up program designed to look for transit timing variations in well-known transiting systems called, the Apache Point Survey of Transit ... -
Inferring the Evolutionary Histories of Stars and Their Planets
Modern surveys like NASA’s Kepler mission have collected a wealth of data in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. This vast quantity of data has enabled novel statistical investigations of the physical processes that shape ... -
Karhunen-Loeve Analysis for Weak Gravitational Lensing
(2013-02-25)In the past decade, weak gravitational lensing has become an important tool in the study of the universe at the largest scale, giving insights into the distribution of dark matter, the expansion of the universe, and the ... -
Mapping the Circumgalactic Medium: Connecting Galaxies to their Environment
The work presented in this dissertation provides the groundwork for understanding key unresolved questions in the study of galaxy evolution: the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and the role of environment. I present a new ... -
The Milky Way in SDSS and in N-body Models
(2013-11-14)In this thesis, I present a comparison between recent Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Galactic studies and N-body simulations to aid in the interpretation of observed structural features. I investigate the origin of the ... -
Modeling Supermassive Black Holes in Cosmological Simulations
My thesis work has focused on improving the implementation of supermassive black hole (SMBH) physics in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. SMBHs are ubiquitous in mas- sive galaxies, as well as bulge-less galaxies and ...