Olivia DrakeSeth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, received a grant worth $65,932 from the Space Telescope Institute to support a project titled, "Cool Star Winds and the Evolution of Exoplanetary Atmospheres." The grant expires in October 2014. Redfield is observing stars that are host to their own planetary systems. These "exoplanets" were only discovered in the last decade or so, and since their discovery, astronomers are very interested in learning more about the properties of these planets and their atmospheres. "Invariably, the study of exoplanets is really an exercise in putting life on Earth into a cosmic context. How common are planets?…
David PesciIn the summer of 2010 Craig Malamut traveled to the Easter Islands to study and photograph a rare solar eclipse. Soon after his eclipse observations were completed, NASA used one of his photographs in their official materials on the event. He also spent a week collaborating with astronomers from the University of Chile in Santiago to study Pluto’s atmosphere as it obscured the light from a faint star. This year, Malamut has coauthored two papers for astronomical journals and is analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope on gas and dust clouds lying near the sun and other nearby stars.…
Ed Moran, associate professor of astronomy, received a grant worth $62,804 from NASA for a project titled "Black Holes at the Center of Nearby Dwarf Galaxies." The project involves observations of six dwarf galaxies with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, also known as the "Hubble Space Telescope of X-ray Astronomy." "We have identified 'active nuclei' in these objects, which are powered by the accretion of gas onto massive black holes," Moran says. "The X-ray emission associated with the accretion will give us direct information about the black holes and their surroundings in their host galaxies." The black holes in these galaxies…
Craig Malamut '12 is the primary author of "High-Resolution Imaging of the 2010 Total Solar Eclipse at Easter Island," which will be published in the Coronal Courant, an on-line journal for students maintained by the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). The article describes some results from experiments done during the 2010 total solar eclipse, for which he traveled to Easter Island. Malamut is also a co-author of "Structure and Dynamics of the 2010 Jully 11 Eclipse White-Light Corona," which was published by The Astrophysical Journal in its June 20 issue. Malamut was supported by the Keck Northeast…
Holly Capelo, a graduate student in the Astronomy Department, wrote a contribution to "astrobites," an e-newsletter for students and others interested in astronomy. In her article, titled "Careers, Like Space Missions, are Tricky: How a Master’s Degree Can Help," Capelo writes about her experience as a M.A. student at Wesleyan: "In general the program is quite flexible: the curriculum includes a baseline number of astronomy courses and the rest of the course work is custom fit for individual students’ backgrounds and goals; often the candidates have undergraduate degrees in related fields, such as math, physics and computer science, and acquire…
Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, is the co-author of "The Highly Dynamic Behavior of the Innermost Dust and Gas in the Transition Disk Variable LRLL 31," published in The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 732, Issue 2, article id. 83 in 2011, and "Preliminary Analysis of MOST Observations of the Trapezium," published in American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #96.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43 in 2011. Herbst and his graduate student Holly Capelo are the authors of "Optical And Infrared Monitoring Of KH 15D," published in the American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #226.08; Bulletin…
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Marshall Johnson’s research is out of this world. For the past two years, the senior astronomy major used the Van Vleck Observatory’s 24-inch Perkin Telescope to study the transits of “exoplanets,” or planets outside our solar system, that orbit another star. His study, titled “First Results from the Wesleyan Transiting Exoplanet Program,” explains a refined orbital period of a newly-discovered planet named WASP-33b (Wide Angle Search for Planets). Ultimately, Johnson may prove that he’s discovered another planet, WASP-33c. “Here in Connecticut, with clouds and haze, we don’t have the best observing conditions, but I was still able to obtain high-quality…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, received a $55,973 grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute to support the Advanced Spectra Library Project: Cool Stars. The grant will allow Redfield to facilitate the analysis of data collected on the Hubble Space Telescope and travel to meetings to present the results. He will collaborate with 20 other researchers from around the world on the project. "All astronomers, worldwide, put in proposals once a year to use the Hubble to get observations. They get about 10 times more requests than they have time to give," Redfield explains. "If you are approved, you…
Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, received a grant for $471,990 from the National Science Foundation. The grant will provide summer research stipends for students and funds for an Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium with the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC). KNAC is a group of consisting of Wesleyan and seven other institutions (Colgate, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Vassar, Wellesley and Williams) that have worked together to improve research experiences for undergraduate astronomy majors. KNAC was formed 20 years ago with a seed grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation and has been supported in recent years by the…
James Greenwood, research associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, received a grant worth $494,517 from NASA. The grant will support his research titled “Water in Lunar Rocks: Petrologic and Isotopic Analyses of Phosphate Minerals in Apollo’s Samples” through June 30, 2014.
On July 11, Craig Malamut ’12 photographed a pacific solar eclipse 2,500 miles west of South America. As a Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Summer Fellow, summer exchange student, Malamut had the opportunity to travel to Easter Island with a group from Williams College. The last time an eclipse occurred over the island was in 591 A.D. The expedition was led by Jay Pasachoff, the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses. This was Pasachoff's 51st solar eclipse study; it was Malamut’s first. “Before getting this position, I was…