Research Projects
ALMA-SPONGE
September 2020-June 2021
This project used data from ALMA and the VLA to measure the abundance of different molecules in the Milky Way and better describe the potentially star forming environments in which those molecules were present.
I collected additional data from public archives and compared different molecular species by plotting the spectral lines for molecular line transitions. I also plotted individual velocity channel maps of each of those sources, to look at the specific velocities that the gas was detected and what sorts of structures they formed, especially as the gas in these regions was colder and denser than surrounding regions, making it more suitable for future star formation.
Calculating the Upper Limits of Molecules in the Magellanic Stream
February 2021-January 2024
This project is funded by the UW-Madison Hilldale Undergraduate Research Fellowship and allows me to be the lead investigator.
I am using observations from ALMA to search for molecules in the Magellanic Stream, a tidal tail of diffuse falling onto the Milky Way, and identify locations for future star formation. As the most abundant molecule in the universe, H2, does not produce radiation in cold diffuse environments, I am searching for HCO+, HCN, HNC, and C2H, molecules that can trace molecular hydrogen. I am comparing the observations with archival HI data from GASS and GALFA to estimate the velocities of any molecules that might be present. I also calculated the upper limits of the optical depths and am using those to contribute to models of the Magellanic Stream.
An ALMA Spectral Line Survey of the Helix Nebula Globules
May 2021-Present
I began this project as an REU student at the Green Bank Observatory during the summer of 2021. I compared 12 molecular transitions in two dense clouds of cold gas, called globules, in the Helix Nebula to examine the chemical interactions and evolution of the planetary nebula as the outer layers of the star return to the interstellar medium. I began by examining the integrated intensity of each of the molecular transitions and comparing those with the spectral lines of the globules as a whole. Several of the molecular transitions included hyperfine transitions, so I characterized and fit Gaussian curves to them. I then examined the velocity distribution of the two globules, also using velocity as a space variable to model the globules from the side to fit them into the structure of the entire Helix Nebula, calculating the angles, sizes and approximate masses of each of the globules. I also calculated the optical depth and column density across the globules for both globules.
Mapping [C I] in the Outer Layers of the Helix Nebula
May 2022-Present
I started work on this project during my second summer as an REU student at the Green Bank Observatory in 2022. This data was observed using the Atacama Compact Array, a subsection of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. I examined 3 sources in the outer layers of the Helix Nebula (East, West, and Rim) to create the highest resolution maps of neutral carbon to date. First, I completed all of the data reduction using CASA and ran two of the sources through the calibration pipeline. Then, I plotted the spectra for each point, comparing with IRAM-30m molecular data at the same locations to confirm the detections. I also mapped [C I] at the Rim and East positions and calculated the upper limits of the abundances at the West position. Lastly, I compared this data to archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope using Hα and [O III] to detect cavities in the ionized gas where the cold atomic and molecular gas resides.
ARTISTIC: A New Data Analysis Pipeline for COSMIC
May 2023-Present
I began this project as an REU student at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. During this summer, I built a pipeline called ARTISTIC, which stands for the Anomaly, RFI, and Technosignature Identification Search and Tabularization In COSMIC. This pipeline works to quickly analyze large sets of data from COSMIC, the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometric Cluster. COSMIC operates on the VLA to search for narrowband, drifting radio technosignature candidates that were produced by extraterrestrial civilizations. I developed this pipeline by considering what Earth would look like from large distances. I then expanded that to other more advanced civilizations, operating at different frequencies, and on exoplanets with different orbital velocities around their host stars. By starting with an initial data set of 5.7 million data points, called hits, I narrowed the hits down to a shortlist of 289 hits to further analyze for SETI candidates.
Detecting new HI absorption sources in NGC 1613 using LGLBS data
September 2023-Present
This project serves as my senior honors thesis at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where I am working under the supervision of Professor Snezana Stanimirovic and Dr. Nick Pingel. I use data from the Local Group L-Band Survey, which conducts the highest spatial and velocity resolution mapping in OH and HI of the galaxies in the Local Group. With this data, I am currently searching for absorption features in HI in the nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 1613. These sources could come from HII regions or from background quasar. Both act as flashlights behind the clouds of gas to indicate the presence of cold, dense gas.
In the future, this can also inform future observations and studies of kinematics and star formation in these small low-metallicity galaxies.