- Research and Education Activities
- Training and Development:
- Findings
Year 4 Research, Education and Training Activities
February 28 - March 3, 2011: Although Walter did not attend, he was lead and coauthor on a total of four posters and one oral talk at the 'Telescopes from Afar' conference in Hawaii. Colleagues from collaborating institution Western Kentucky University and Villanova gave these presentations. Walter was lead author on the poster 'Narrow-band Imagery with the 1.3-meter Robotically Controlled Telescope (RCT). More details on the conference including abstracts can be found at: http://tfa.cfht.hawaii.edu/
February 28 - March 3, 2011: Although Walter did not attend, he was lead and coauthor on a total of four posters and one oral talk at the 'Telescopes from Afar' conference in Hawaii. Colleagues from collaborating institution Western Kentucky University and Villanova gave these presentations. Walter was lead author on the poster 'Narrow-band Imagery with the 1.3-meter Robotically Controlled Telescope (RCT). More details on the conference including abstracts can be found at: http://tfa.cfht.hawaii.edu/
March 26, 2011: SC State and POCA hosted the 2012 Meeting of Astronomers in South Carolina (MASC) with a total of 38 faculty, postdocs, grad students, undergraduates and amateur astronomers from 10 institutions in attendance. A total of 16 talks and 5 posters were presented including talks by POCA faculty D. Smith and D. Hartmann and POCA students Jared Lalmansingh, Eva Nesmith and Bryan Pugh.
March 30 - April 2, 2011: Dr. Walter used the Coude Feed Telescope at KPNO on three good observing nights out of four to acquire spectra in the blue (3700 - 5100 angstroms) and red (6400-9000 angstroms) of a number of RV Tauri, Semiregular and peculiar stars.
May 16-19, 2011: PI Walter continued the POCA project's long term study of RV Tauri and Semiregular variables with another successful observing run at KPNO using the Coude Feed Telescope. Three nights out of four were useful, with one night lost to weather. Blue spectra (3700-5100 angstroms) were obtained including stars that were simultaneously being observed from space by NASA's Kepler Observatory as part of a program lead by Walter, Cash and Howell.
July 12-13, 2011: Two SC State faculty and five POCA students traveled to Clemson for a tour of the campus, a real-time, remote login session with the SARA South telescope and a set of 10 talks by faculty and students from the two institutions.
October 10-13, 2011: Walter traveled to KPNO to again observe RV Tauri and Semi-regular stars with the Coude Feed telescope. He had four nights out of four of excellent weather and good observing. Blue (3700 - 5100 angstroms) and red (6400-9000 angstroms) spectra were acquired.
October 24-26, 2011: PI Walter attended the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics conference on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The title of the conference was ' The Impact of Asteroseismology across Stellar Astrophysics'. Walter was able to make contact with several modeling groups and is currently exploring a future collaboration with one of the groups.
November 14-17, 2011: Co-PI Cash was part of a booth exhibit at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis' in Seattle, Washington. Her display dealt with the Kepler light curve analysis she has been conducting.
January 8-12, 2012: Two SC State faculty and four POCA-funded students traveled to the AAS meeting in Austin, Texas, to attend various sessions and to present a total of three posters as described in the 'One-time Publications' section of this report.
May 10-11, 2011: Drs. Cash and Walter traveled to the NASA Ames Research Center to work with astronomers in the Kepler Guest Observer Office, learning how to analyze their Cycle 3 Kepler data. They examined light curves of stars taken by the Kepler Observatory as part of their NASA-funded study with colleague Dr. Steve Howell who is the Deputy Project Scientist for Kepler.
May-July, 2011: A total of six undergraduates participated in the summer internship program funded by POCA at SC State and Clemson. The POCA Undergraduate Summer Internship Program is similar to NSF REU programs, but is designed to be a multiyear experience with each summer building on the skills developed previously. Unlike most REU programs, the POCA program begins with students after their freshman or sophomore years when they generally have little or no previous research experience. These are known as Tier I students. Returning students, known as Tier II, participate for a second or third summer at a more advanced level. During the summer of 2011, 3 Tier I and 2 Tier II students conducted research at SC State. At Clemson, Tier II student Charles Kurgatt was mentored by Dr. Sean Brittain as described elsewhere. More information on the program can be found at: http://physics.scsu.edu/paare/students/reu.html
August 16, 2011 - May 15, 2012: POCA undergraduate, Charles Kurgatt, conducted research as independent study courses during the academic year. He examined RCT images and spectroscopic data from the KPNO Coude Feed Telescope. His results will be part of a future paper that includes him as a coauthor.
March 26, 2011: SC State and POCA hosted the 2012 Meeting of Astronomers in South Carolina (MASC) with a total of 38 faculty, postdocs, grad students, undergraduates and amateur astronomers from 10 institutions in attendance. A total of 16 talks and 5 posters were presented including talks by POCA faculty D. Smith and D. Hartmann and POCA students Jared Lalmansingh, Eva Nesmith and Bryan Pugh.
March 30 - April 2, 2011: Dr. Walter used the Coude Feed Telescope at KPNO on three good observing nights out of four to acquire spectra in the blue (3700 - 5100 angstroms) and red (6400-9000 angstroms) of a number of RV Tauri, Semiregular and peculiar stars.
May 16-19, 2011: PI Walter continued the POCA project's long term study of RV Tauri and Semiregular variables with another successful observing run at KPNO using the Coude Feed Telescope. Three nights out of four were useful, with one night lost to weather. Blue spectra (3700-5100 angstroms) were obtained including stars that were simultaneously being observed from space by NASA's Kepler Observatory as part of a program lead by Walter, Cash and Howell.
July 12-13, 2011: Two SC State faculty and five POCA students traveled to Clemson for a tour of the campus, a real-time, remote login session with the SARA South telescope and a set of 10 talks by faculty and students from the two institutions.
October 10-13, 2011: Walter traveled to KPNO to again observe RV Tauri and Semi-regular stars with the Coude Feed telescope. He had four nights out of four of excellent weather and good observing. Blue (3700 - 5100 angstroms) and red (6400-9000 angstroms) spectra were acquired.
October 24-26, 2011: PI Walter attended the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics conference on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The title of the conference was ' The Impact of Asteroseismology across Stellar Astrophysics'. Walter was able to make contact with several modeling groups and is currently exploring a future collaboration with one of the groups.
November 14-17, 2011: Co-PI Cash was part of a booth exhibit at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis' in Seattle, Washington. Her display dealt with the Kepler light curve analysis she has been conducting.
January 8-12, 2012: Two SC State faculty and four POCA-funded students traveled to the AAS meeting in Austin, Texas, to attend various sessions and to present a total of three posters as described in the 'One-time Publications' section of this report.
Mayo's published work: Mayo, E. and Troland, T.2012, AJ, 143, 32; 'Very Large Array H I Zeeman Observations of the Cygnus X Region: DR 22 and ON 2' has contributed to a better understanding of the role magnetic fields play in star formation. Specifically from the abstract:
We have used the Very Large Array to study the Zeeman effect in 21 cm H I absorption lines from two star-forming regions in the Cygnus X complex, DR 22 and ON 2. We measure the line-of-sight magnetic field toward these regions, finding B los = -84 ? 11 μG toward the DR 22 H II region and B los < 50 μG toward each of the two H II regions in ON 2. We interpret these results in terms of two different models. In one model, we assume that the H I Zeeman effect is a measure of magnetic fields in the associated molecular clouds. If so, then the DR 22 molecular cloud is magnetically subcritical, that is, magnetically dominated. The ON 2 molecular clouds are magnetically supercritical. In a second model, we assume that the H I Zeeman effect is a measure of magnetic fields in photon-dominated regions where the gas has been compressed (and the field amplified) by absorption of stellar radiation. We find that this second model, where the measured field strength has been affected by star formation, accounts well for the DR 22 H I Zeeman effect. This same model, however, overpredicts the magnetic field in ON 2. ON 2 may be a region where the magnetic field is energetically insignificant or where the field happens to lie nearly in the plane of the sky.
