Research Paper

Welcome back everyone!

This week was dedicated to the writing of my research paper. As I stated last week, I have pretty much reached an end in my project, so all that I have left are my final projects, which include a 10-page paper and poster, along with the presentation.

This week, I managed to make significant progress in my research paper. So far, I am on the forth out of the five pages (single-spaced). After being gone for several months, I have had to do some refreshing on the formatting of research papers. So far, I have written the abstract, introduction, the methods, and results. I need to begin the discussion and conclusion, which I hope to have completed by mid-week next week. That would be optimal for me, considering I could move on to the poster as well as free up time for more presentation rehearsals.

There is a benefit to writing this research paper first, and that is that I can transfer a a great deal of material to my presentation. The paper is quite different in comparison to other scientific papers in that I am having to explain the terms so that it's easier for people to comprehend the material. Not to say that it's too complex for them, it's just that I'm sure that most people have not been exposed to the field of astronomy. With that being said, I will have to do similar explaining when it comes time for my presentation. Having already explained the words on paper will definitely give me an plan on how I want to go about explaining all the terms.

As for my poster, I have not yet planned out how I want it to look. My presentation is almost complete as well. The nice thing about this presentation is that I am going to have 20 minutes to speak, meaning that it's going to give me a pretty good amount of time to explain everything I need to. I'm not to worried about giving the presentation. The only thing I am worried about is the audience's comprehension. In other words, I want to make sure everyone understands what I am saying because if they don't, me standing up there for 20 minutes will definitely not be entertaining to them. The more I rehearse however, the better I am going to be at my explanations.

Thanks everyone for reading. I hope you enjoyed hearing about all that I did this week. Have a great weekend.

Finishing the Project

Hi everyone!!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic week. I would say this was another slow week for I am reaching the end of my project. This week I received an email from my advisor stating that I had pretty much finished what he wanted me to do. It was nice to hear because there was a lot of math involved. It felt great to take a break from it all. 

In his email he told me what my values meant. I had previously emailed him what values I had reached for my standard deviations. He replied and transferred those values for standard deviation into scatter. Scatter is pretty self-explanatory. My data regarding the peak magnitude had a scatter of 0.19 dex (scatter units). My data regarding the magnitude at 95% had a scatter at 0.16 dex. was Therefore, I am able to determine distance of a supernova up to 0.16 dex. The typical standard candle (type Ia supernovae) has a scatter of 0.05, so my use of supernovae type IIb added a little more scatter. 

I also calibrated the Hubble Constant again but with the supernovae I used in this part of the experiment. I reached a value of ~69 km/s/Mpc. I didn't use this particular method, so that's one value. I plan on finding another value using the method I have been talking about for the past few weeks in a few days.

He also said that I could start my report. I did start that. I have already written my abstract and am currently working on the introduction. 

I must say that doing this work has been a real eye opener in to the world of astronomy. The math and steps required to reach a value for the Hubble Constant is extensive. It definitely gives me an idea of what to expect in astronomy. I can't say though, whether it has affected me positively or negatively. I do like, however, what my values mean in the world. Sure, finding the values is a task and can be strenuous, but what the result means is always interesting and rewarding. I'm sure you guys find my explanation on how to find the Hubble Constant is not the most joyful and fascinating thing. I do think though that the number I have found is mind-blowing. Just imagine, the universe is traveling at a rate, according to me, of 69 km/s/Mpc, spreading into space that doesn't even exist. I love what I have found, and I hope you guys have liked learning about.

Talk to you next week, as I continue writing my paper.

Thank you,

Max Biwer

Standard Deviation

Hello everyone!

This week was a bit slower than other weeks, but that was because I hit a complication in the project. When I say complication, I mean standard deviation...

I was in contact with my ASU advisor and I had a difficult time understanding what he was trying to get me to do. Really, that was the complication because finding the standard deviation itself is not hard. Thank you chemistry!! Just in case you are not familiar with the term standard deviation, it refers to how far data is from the mean (average). It's on a scale from 0 to 1. If your data gives you a standard deviation of 1, it means your data is pretty scattered.

After a reading a great deal about standard deviation, I realized what he was asking me to do. He wanted me to find the standard deviation of the data and the standard deviation of the data with a fitted line (trendline). I had to do all of this in Excel, for it's the easiest way to graph, use trendlines, and input equations. In case you didn't read my last post, I am using two scenarios for my data. I am graphing the peak magnitudes (maximum brightness) of the supernovae (explosions) against the time it takes for the supernovae to reach 95% of their peak magnitudes. I am also graphing the peak magnitudes of the supernovae against the time it takes for the supernovae to gain 1 magnitude from its peak magnitude. Since we are dealing with negatives, the magnitude will be heading towards zero.

For the Peak Magnitude vs 95% Magnitude data, I had to find two standard deviations. I found a standard deviation of 0.817 for the fitted trendline and a standard deviation of 0.941 for the data without the fitted line. As you can see, the data is pretty scattered.

For the Peak Magnitude vs 1 + Peak Magnitude data, I had to find two more standard deviations. I found a standard deviation of 0.922 for the trendline and a standard deviation of .941 for the data without the fitted line. Similarly, the data is scattered.

That's pretty much what I have been up to this week. In summary, I had to find the standard deviation of my data. This would show me how scattered my data is. However, with supernovae type II, there is usually a great deal of scatter, as the explosions are usually varied.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "what does this all mean?" Great Question!!

See you next week!

Standard Candles: Type IIb Supernovae

Hi!!

Last week, I mentioned that I had a new task assigned to me from my on-site advisor. I had some trouble understanding what he was trying to say, but after a few emails, I realized he was asking me to standardize supernovae type II.

At first, I had no idea where to start. Supernovae type Ia (explosions of white dwarf stars) all have a absolute magnitude near -19.3. This is because these stars all explode when they reach a certain mass limit. Hence, they explode at roughly the same size and burn off the same amount of energy. That makes things easier for standardization of type Ia supernovae, but supernovae type II are a different scenario.

In order to standardize the supernovae (find a similar luminosity in all super massive explosions), I needed to measure the peak magnitudes of my selected supernovae and plot them against the amount of time it takes for them to decrease to 95% of their peak magnitudes. In other the words, plot them against the fading supernovae. I came up with this with the help of my BASIS advisor, Dr. Whaley. We met on Tuesday this week, for about an hour, and tried to figure out how to go about doing this. The method we came up with was then passed on to my professor at ASU. He said that was correct, but he also wanted me to try another method. Instead of 95%, he wanted me to add 1 to the peak magnitudes. It's essentially the same thing, just different values.

I've done both, and the next step is to find the standard deviation of the magnitudes. That will be my task for next week, for afterwards, I will have to plot my corrected mags. I am reaching a conclusion, and to know that I am on the right track is exciting.

I am still looking at my emails, waiting for him to email me about night time observing. It's been especially difficult recently, due to the clouds that have been above us for the last few days.

That's what I have been up to this week. I hope you enjoyed reading. As always, any questions you have, please leave them below. Check back next week for updated progress.

I have attached a picture of my table for the data values. Unfortunately, I could not get a big enough picture on here. That said, you probably won't be able to read the values. I just attached it to show you the size of the table that was required to reach a plausible conclusion.

Hubble Constant: Data!

Hello everyone.

I hope everyone enjoyed their break. I know I had a nice time escaping the work for a week. Now, I am back to completing my project.

This week has been the week where I have begun to compile all the data needed for determining the Hubble Constant. All the work I have done before this week has been such a help because with all the numbers I have looked at, I am now able to determine what data I actually need.

I am using most of my data from a source called "sne.space". This website is an open supernova catalog, meaning that most, if not all, supernovae data has been logged here. I am able to look at it's redshift, and most importantly, their absolute and apparent magnitudes. Knowing the magnitudes is a great help when it comes to finding the distance to an object. So far, I have taken data from around 15 supernovae. If I am doing the calculations correctly, I am reaching a Hubble Constant value of 67.1 km/s/Mpc. Considering that the astronomers get values around 70 km/s/Mpc, I'm pretty happy with what I have done so far.

I sent the data I had to the professor, just to make sure I was doing it correctly, and he replied that I had been doing it right. He did mention that he wanted me to try to find the distance in a different way, a standardization of supernovae type IIb. Supernovae type II are explosions of massive stars, much larger than ours. Most people use type Ia supernovae (the explosion of white dwarf stars) because of their brightness. They have been dubbed "standard candles". Because they are standard candles, they all have magnitudes (brightness) of 19.3. Not many people have considered type II supernovae "standard candles", so he wants me to standardize type II supernovae. I'll need to find a magnitude consistent for all supernovae type IIb. In my view, it's pretty complicated, but I'll figure it out with the help of my advisor.

I think this will be an interesting next step for my project. It's a way to determine the Hubble Constant with the standard candle method. Because I'm not too familiar with this method, I am currently reading two papers that deal with the standardization of supernovae type IIb. Once I finish them, I should have a good idea of what I'll need to do to complete the task.

Thanks for reading!!

Finding the Hubble Constant

Welcome readers!

This week was a slower week, for most of my work consisted of reading up on how to determine the Hubble Constant. This was valuable though because I found out what to do with the data once I receive it. I've come to realize, however, that I have not properly discussed what I need to do to find the rate at which the universe is expanding. I will do my best to explain it in a way that won't be dry.

There are a few ways to measure the universe's rate of expansion, including the use of supernovae or cepheid variable stars. In case you don't know, a supernova is an explosion of a star while cepheid variable stars are stars that have periods of luminosity (similar to a slow flicker of a lightbulb). Astronomers use these objects because of the amount of light that they emit. Supernovae are one of the brightest objects in the sky. One was recorded as 20 times brighter than the combined amount of light from the Milky Way galaxy's 100 billion stars! Because they can be so bright, making them easier to observe, they are optimal for finding distance. In order to find the distance of the stars, astronomers need to know their apparent magnitude (how bright they look to us) and absolute magnitude (how bright they are with a standard distance of 32.6 light-years), and/or luminosity (the amount of energy emitted from the star). Once researchers have found the apparent magnitude (m) and absolute magnitude (M), they can plug it into the equation d = 10^{[(m-M) + 5]/5}.

To find the velocity of the star, or galaxy, astronomers need to determine the redshift. When objects move away from us, light shifts toward the red end of the spectrum, meaning that wavelengths get longer. Some have described this by relating it to a police siren. As the siren approaches, the pitch gets higher, but as it passes, their is a sudden decrease in the pitch. This arises because the sound waves are closer together when moving towards the listener, but the sounds waves stretch once they make their way past the listener. This is known as the Doppler Effect! Galaxies have the same effect. Because most galaxies are moving away from us, the light is stretched. Redshift can be described, in other words, as the shift in wavelengths of light. The equation for this is z = (observed wavelength - rest wavelength)/(rest wavelength). Rest wavelength is the wavelength of a star, or galaxy, not moving. If we have the redshift (z), we can multiply it by the speed of light, which is 300,000 km/s, to find the velocity of the object.

Now that we have both the velocity and distance, we can find the Hubble Constant. The Hubble Constant is the relationship between both velocity and distance. With both values, we can plot them on a graph. If we do this using several supernovae, we can determine the slope. The slope is the value of the Hubble Constant. The Constant is defined in terms of km/s/Mpc. Mpc is an abbreviation for Mega parsecs, a distance value. That tells us how far the object is. The km/s tells us how fast that object is receding from us.

I hope this cleared up any questions you had about how I am approaching this problem. If there are any questions, feel free to leave them below. Hope you guys have a good weekend!

BANG!!: Cosmology and Beyond

Welcome back!!

This week was an exciting one for I made my first visitation to ASU. As I stated before, I was a little nervous, especially when I couldn't find my advisor (we'll get to that in a second). After going there for a couple of hours, I got extremely exciting for the upcoming weeks. I plan on sharing with you my experiences at the cosmology lab.

I arrived at the ASU lab around 12:20 pm. I walked into the Goldwater building and made my way to the fifth floor. As I left the elevator, I was greeted with a wall covered with stars. The wall read 'BANG!: Cosmology and Beyond". I continued around the corner and asked around for my advisor's office. I found it eventually, but he wasn't there. I thought it best just to wait at the office for a few minutes, but it reached a quarter till 1:00, and I wasn't sure where the meeting was. After asking around more, I found a graduate student who was actually part of the meeting. He took me into the room and we waited until my advisor came in. 

The meeting itself was really interesting. I was in a room with three graduate students and a professor, all studying astronomy. One was working on supernovae, another on exoplanets, and the last was working on gravitational waves. In fact, as they were discussing what they had done that week, I could understand what they were talking about. The one student working on supernovae is allowing me to use some of his data to use for the Hubble Constant. At about 2:00pm was when the meeting ended. I enjoyed the hour listening and talking with people who work in the field. 

Afterward, my advisor and I went to one of their labs. He showed me around. A lot of what they were working on in there was related to optical systems. I saw lenses all over the place and a few telescopes as well. 

I did find out, however, that they were having problems with the telescopes, so I have to put the project on hold for a week or two. I asked him what I could do before he gets the data and the telescopes running, and he said I should read up on the functionality of telescopes, the constellations and their locations during different seasons, more information on supernovae and their relation to the Hubble Constant. He also mentioned that I can come in and ask for help if I have problems. He was a really nice person, and I'm looking forward to working with him.

Come back next week!