Coming to the end of my internship, I am nothing but grateful for this opportunity and amazed with how much I learned. This has been the best space to explore my interests could ever ask for. That being said, the lab is still plenty busy with lots going on with the assembly cube satellite SPRITE.
I continue to map the outflow of gas of M82. This weeks focus is taking older maps actually from two weeks ago and combining them using the propagation of uncertainty. This will take all the data points from the maps I have made thus far and make them compatible with the graph that will tell us the source of ionization. This is by far the coolest step in my project because I am learning so much about how to combine the values of my different maps. This involves a complex equation that I must use twice(once for each gas pair). However, this did not come without its flaws. I spent most of my week trouble shooting as my data would either combine in a manner that we can’t use or forget which pixels are nan values(not supposed to be apart of the map) while creating the new map. I find this part of my project the most fun as it is that much more rewarding when achieving the final proper map.
Outside of my project I was able to assist with the assembly of SPRITE on Friday, which is always a treat. It is so cool to know I helped assemble parts that are actually going to space, low Earth orbit to be specific. The problem we ran into this week is that when assembling SPRITE one of the holes drilled in the frame was not large enough for the pistons that turn on and of the batteries and power for the cube satellite. It was very interesting to see the actual working parts of the satellite’s electronics and how it will be able to do the things it is programmed to do in space.
In addition to my work in the lab I was able to hangout with my family in Denver this weekend. We watched a movie Saturday night after dinner together and then went to a trampoline park Sunday morning.
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