After a break where I was able to visit my family and celebrate the Fourth of July with my friends I have returned to Boulder for the remainder of my internship. I went back to work on Monday and worked through Friday. This week I was introduced to my big project: analyzing data from galaxy M82. M82 is notable for being the closet starburst galaxy (galaxy creating lots of stars). It is also an on-edge galaxy, meaning it is easier for us to analyze the gas being emitted by the galaxy. Monday I spent learning the details of my project.
The rest of the week was spent familiarizing myself with the tools and applications I will be using for my project. This includes lots of python. I run most of my codes in Spyder but I also use the Jupyter labs notebooks to read about how the code was used. I also use a program called SAO Image 9 to open up an adjustable model for the code given to me for when I don’t have to open it manually with python. Using the data given to me I will write code to take the values of pixels in the images a determine whether the gas that created that pixel was created through photo ionization (creation from a star) or shock-ionization (collision with another gas cloud).
In our weekly coffee and galaxies meeting we talked about a paper published trying to identify the creation sources of medium mass black holes. I additionally learned about the Population 3 theory, the universe started with stars so huge made from so much hydrogen and helium that they collapsed immediately into super massive black holes make up population one. In this theory stars like ours is population 3 and the larger stars closer to the edge are population 2. Because the first population no longer exists it makes this harder to prove.
On Tuesday Liam and I assembled a cable used for testing on some electronics of SPRITE, the cube satellite. We had to take wires out of a 50 wire socket and insert them into another 37 wire socket. We developed a system of Liam taking out the wires and I would insert them. We had to test along the way to ensure that the right wires ended up in the right places. After we were finished we tested the cable on more time and then I watched the testing the next day.
This weekend Liam and I are excited to watch a lot of soccer but other than that I don’t expect to much will happen.
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