ASTR 421: Galaxies
Projects
Projects will culminate in a five minute oral presentation by each student on
a topic of your choosing. Please consult with me on your choice of topic;
once these are settled I will make up a schedule. Presentations will occur
near the end of the semseter.
Take a look at the lists below for topic ideas.
Another good way to get ideas is to scan the journals and preprint
server astro-ph.
Ideally, you should pick a paper, read and comprehend it and any
necessary references, and then present the result.
Once you have selected a topic, come discuss it with me.
I will help guide your reading, and can help you to focus on
topics that are appropriate in scale and subject matter.
Part of the assignment is to write an abstract for your presentation.
Abstracts are, by definition, short. They should succintly express
the main result and elicit interest therein. These will be
distributed to your classmates about a week before the presentations.
You will report your finding to the class in an oral presentation
five minutes in duration.
Example Topics
Examples of potential topics might be
- The stellar mass of the universe (2Mass)
- The effects of a variable stellar IMF (Starburst99)
- Color variations within galaxies (2Mass, DSS)
- Color distribution of galaxies as a fcn of redshift (HDF,2dFGRS)
- Large scale structures traced by galaxies (2dFGRS, 2QZ, SDSS)
- High redshift galaxies (HDF et al.)
- Spectral classification of active galaxies (nearby galaxy spectra)
- Milky Way dust distribution (Lambda)
These are just a few possibilities off the top of my head.
It is a big universe - the possibilities are endless!
Further ideas for topics
dwarf galaxies
giant (Malin) galaxies
origin of S0 galaxies: ``nature'' versus ``nurture''
boxy bulge - stellar bar connection
Galactic reddening determinations: descendants of the cosec law
Optical depth of spiral galaxies and realistic dust distributions
phases of the ISM and their distribution in our Galaxy
the distribution of HI and CO gas in spiral galaxies
interacting galaxies in the local universe
globular clusters in external galaxies
formation of globular clusters
the Hipparcus satellite and our knowledge of Galactic structure and evolution
Milky Way Mass determinations
dynamics of the Local Group
the Magellanic stream and its significance for the total mass of the Milky Way
dynamics of the Local Supercluster
the Great Attractor
X-ray properties of clusters of galaxies
computer simulations of merging galaxies
computer simulations of the evolution of clusters of galaxies
numerical simulations of stellar systems: N-body, Fourier method, SPH, etc.
ultraluminous infrared galaxies: the starburst - quasar connection
mass determinations from gravitational lensing
Lyman alpha absorption line clouds
the HST key project on quasar hosts
the HST key project on the extragalactic distance scale
distance determinations: surface brightness fluctuations, globular clusters,
planetary nebulae, supernovae...
faint blue galaxies
the Hubble Deep Fields
the MACHO project
the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and its applications for the extragalactic distance scale
the extragalactic X-ray background
the extragalactic far-infrared background
the global star formation history of the universe
galaxy formation
e-resources
NED: The NASA
Extragalactic Database
SDSS: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
2Mass: The 2Mass
InfraRed Sky Survey - a variety of
catalogs,
including the
extended source server
- STScI:
Space Telescope Science Institute
- Deep Surveys:
HDF |
HDF South |
GOODS |
UDF
- DSS: The
Digitized Palomar Sky Survey
- Starburst99:
Population synthesis
- Nearby
Galaxy Spectra
- MAST: Multimission Archive at
Space Telescope
Lambda: Archive of mm-wave
observations
(dust, synchrotron, & free-free emission in the Milky Way).
Includes data from WMAP & COBE.
VIRGO:
Dark Matter Simulations
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