Research
This page contains a summary of the research projects that I have previously worked on and includes a brief introduction to my current research. (Click images for links.)
Current Project
Green Valley in the CDF-S
Dr. Benne Holwerda, University of Louisville
As a member of the LADUMA (Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array) Survey, I am studying the star formation rate and gas supply of green valley galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field - South to redshift z~1.4.
Instrumentation 2010-2012
Drs Darren DePoy and Jennifer Marshall, Munnerlyn Astronomical Instrumentation Laboratory
While working at the Munnerlyn Laboratory, I worked on a variety of projects including the Hobbey-Ebberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), and the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). My main project however was as lead on the MooSci (Moon Scintillometer) project. Two MooSci units were created (see image) for use in site characterization of the Giant Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Oberservatory in Chile. These instruments measure scintillation of the Moon to measure the ground layer turbulence profile of the atmosphere. See the following paper for more information about this instruments design. (Note: The first MooSci unit was built by Steven Villanueva, I entered the project when it arrived on site in Chile.)
Blazar Monitoring 2007-2010
Dr. Michael Carini
This project was my undergraduate research and allowed me to be involved in the data collection, reduction, analysis, and presentation. We collected observations and constructed R-band light curves of a class of active galactic nuclei (AGN) called Blazars. By the end of my time on the project, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope had launched and we had begun to construct gamma ray light curves and perform cross correlations between the two data sets. This was performed to learn about jet dynamics during flares, in particular to attempt to understand the origin of seed photons for the gamma ray peak of the spectral energy distribution.