Congratulations to Dr. Nicha Leethochawalit and Mia de los Reyes! Nicha received her PhD, and Mia received her MS, at Caltech’s commencement ceremony on June 14, 2019. It is a bittersweet moment for our group because Nicha will be leaving us, but she is sure to make a splash in the world. Her next adventure will be at the University of Melbourne working with Dr. Michele Trenti on the evolution…
Read MoreIvanna Escala is the 2019 Tombrello Scholar
Congratulations to Ivanna Escala for receiving the Thomas Tombrello Scholarship as part of the France Córdova Graduate Student Fund! The fund provides money for research-related expenses. Ivanna plans to use the money to travel to conferences to present her work on the chemical evolution of stellar systems in and around the Andromeda galaxy. As a side note, France Córdova was Caltech’s commencement speaker on June 14, 2019. Dr. Córdova is…
Read MoreHigh school summer research opportunities
Application The Caltech Summer Research Connection and Evan Kirby, assistant professor of astronomy, are excited to offer research opportunities this summer! Professor Kirby uses stellar spectroscopy to measure the elemental compositions of stars, and he uses those measurements to infer which types of stars existed long ago and how quickly those stars were forming and dying. His favorite type of galaxy is a dwarf galaxy. Dwarf galaxies are near enough…
Read MoreGalactic Chemical Evolution
As discussed previously, some galaxies are passive. In other words, boring. Most of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies are just agglomerations of stars that aren’t doing much. All of the action happened billions of years ago, when those stars formed. At that time, turbulent clouds of gas were collapsing and expanding, and some of those clouds kept collapsing until they became individual stars. All of that gas is gone today,…
Read MoreMia is astrotweeping
Mia de los Reyes has taken over the @astrotweeps Twitter account! She is currently tweeping up a storm about galactic archaeology, manganese, and her insatiable appetite for free food.
Read MoreDwarf Galaxies at the AAS Meeting
Our group will be well represented at next week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society. This semi-annual meeting attracts over 1,000 astronomers. At this meeting, I am hosting a meeting-in-a-meeting called Stellar Abundances in Dwarf Galaxies. If you plan to attend the AAS meeting, then please visit us every day at 10:40 am and 2:50 pm in Plaza D.
Read MoreNicha Leethochawalit is the 2018 Neugebauer Scholar
Congratulations to Nicha Leethochawalit for being named Caltech’s 2018 Neugebauer Scholar! The prize comes with a research grant from the France A. Córdova Graduate Student Fund. Congratulations, Nicha!
Read MoreThe Palomar Space Station
I couldn’t resist posting one more photo. This is Brent, me, and Nicha in the east arm of the 200″ Hale telescope. We were pretending like we were floating through the space station. “Space station” really is the prevailing feeling we got when we were in there! It felt very “Star Trek.” Like, original series Star Trek.
Read MoreAstronomy and Snakes
Astronomers occasionally have to deal with snakes. It’s part of the job. Just kidding. Nicha, Brent, and I were at Palomar Observatory for the past two nights. Last year, Nicha proposed to use the 200″ telescope to observe nearby galaxies to determine the relationship between their mass and metallicity (see my previous blog post). She was granted four nights. Unfortunately, the weather was not good, and she was able to observe only…
Read MoreHeavy Metals
Welcome to Caltech’s Galactic Archaeology blog! In this inaugural post, I’d like to explain what we mean by galactic archaeology. We spend lots of time measuring the composition of stars. Specifically, we pick several elements and attempt to figure out how much of that element is present inside of a star or a galaxy. Different elements encode different information about the star because different elements have different cosmic origins. In…
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