Welcome to my blog!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my Senior Research Project blog!

I hope that all of the seniors who went on the Disneyland trip enjoyed their day there. I know I sure did! I can't wait to see what sort of work everyone is doing for their projects!

I am currently writing this post from the future. As I am finishing up the Week 2 post, I decided to have a quick prologue post before I start posting the weekly updates to underline what sort of work I'll be doing for my project. I'll be working with Dr. George Rieke and a graduate student by the name of Nick Ballering (who I have not met yet) at the U of A Steward Observatory. The subject matter of my SRP is developing a software which utilizes the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, along with two different ways of determining the temperature of stars, to discover the true ages of specific stars and plot theoretical HR tracks using known data. The HR diagram is a tool used by astronomers for over a hundred years in order to better understand how stellar evolution works. The two methods which my final paper will be discussing and the software will be using are spectroscopy and the utilization of photometric colors. I will discuss the specifics and the history of all of these topics in weekly posts.

Even though the HR diagram is a well established system for studying stellar evolution, it is difficult to
pinpoint how old a star really is. Predicting the age of a star by using the data gathered from other stars in the same open cluster is an example of how the age of a star is determined, but such a method isn't as accurate enough. This creates demand for a more exact system which can accurately predict and determine theoretical HR tracks.

I am very excited about starting my internship at Steward, not only because of the research I'll be doing and the people I'll be working with, but also because of the experience I'll gain which will prove to be invaluable in the future.

Good luck to all of the seniors, and have fun!