Hello there... well this week has been one of those weeks, plenty of ups and downs, literally, and tons of things going on so I have conviently broken it up into sections to ease the reader...
My original project here is close to complete. I have been extracting velocities from the spectra of SA 2-237. We have a derived distance of like 1.8 kiloparsecs based on several assumptions that give similar results. These assumptions are from a new project that Hugo and myself have begun working on... it is a completely new idea in PNe that will have great influence if it works out. Hugo has taught me a lot about AGB/PNe and general astronomical tips and tricks. I knew nothing in this area before this REU... now I have increased my knowledge tremendously! PNe are exciting objects.
This week featured several talks, meetings, and colloquim! No surprise there I suppose. First we had Jennifer Johnson from OCIW speak about Heavy Element Abundances in Metal-poor Stars and the r-Process in the Early Galaxy. She mentioned CS 22892-052, a star that is famous at UT, it is in almost every Stellar Seminar... well not every but I don't have to explain myself. HA! Anyway, onward to the next speaker: ME! Woo hoo, on Wednesday I lead the Journal Club on the article "A Relationship Between Nuclear Black Hole Mass And Galaxy Velocity Dispersion" by Gebhardt, K. et. al. 2000. It was fun, I made a cheesy webpage presentation ... it was done up the night before, I should have made it nicer but little time this week. It fit perfectly on the Linux screen! The presentation was good. Nicholas Suntzeff had some valuable input and comments. I learned more about the possibilities of the project, some points that I had thought about also made appearances in questions... however, I didn't have the direct answers but had enough background to direct the discussion until someone came in with a answer. It was fun.
The same day of my presentation featured Chris Smith's talk on The ISM. His talk was very good and very informative. He mentioned the Galactic ecological cycle, it was interesting, I am studying the end of the cycle (PNe). He also went into a Supernova discussion. We even had the basketball/tennis ball bouncing layers demonstration! Woo hoo! On Friday we used the same ball to play some basketball, ha! Thursday Nicole van der Bliek talked to us about Near-Infrared Astronomy. She had some helpful hints on determining Reddening. She also showed us pictures of an IR instrument that she worked with before she came to CTIO. She took us to the lab and we saw the IR instrument they are preparing here. It was way cool. Yes, way cool.
Here I stop, although you may have been thinking that this was never going to end... now come the sections!