Summer Research Scholarships:
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics

Each summer RSAA offer a number of Summer Research Scholarships, which enable suitably qualified undergraduates to spend 8 to 11 weeks at Mount Stromlo working on a research project under the supervision of an RSAA astronomer. The Scholarships provide a first-hand view of the work at a research observatory and scholars have access to state-of-the-art optical, infra-red, radio and computational facilities. Areas of research include star formation, stellar evolution, galactic dynamics, observational cosmology, active galactic nuclei, interstellar-medium physics, computational astrophysics and planetary science.

These scholarships are intended for currently enrolled undergraduate students in universities in Australia and New Zealand completing the third or fourth year of a full-time course leading to an honours degree. Outstanding second year students who are intending to complete an honours degree may also be considered.

This year we hope to be able to offer the 6 unit undergraduate subject, Astrophysics Research Topic - ASTR3005, in conjunction with our Summer Scholarship Program. This option would be available to currently enrolled ANU students and non-ANU students who are eligible for cross-institutional study at their home institution. All students must meet the course entry requirements. Our now renowned annual Summer Scholarship Research Program will continue to be available.

You can choose to study anything from asteroids to supernovae. Below are the projects offered for Summer 2011/2012. Please indicate in your application at least TWO projects, including order of preference.

Convection plays a crucial role in the lives of stars yet the physics of convection is still poorly understood due to its inherent complexity, in particular its time-dependence and 3D nature. The situation is particularly problematic in stars like the Sun where the convective motions reach the surface layers and directly influence also the radiation the stars emit and thus indirectly impacts essentially all information astronomers infer about stars and the cosmos. It is, however, now feasible to make 3D, time-dependent, hydrodynamical models of the surface layers of stars with radiative transfer using supercomputers, an effort that our ANU group is a world-leader in. This project would be to investigate the physics of convection, either through making improved computer simulations or by confronting the predictions of these 3D models against observations revealing the spectroscopic fingerprints of convection, depending on the interest and background of the student.

SkyMapper will observe many asteroids in the course of its survey of the whole sky. Identifying them in multiple filters will allow us to more accurately measure their orbits, and to determine their composition. You will develop a module to do this, which slots into the main  SkyMapper pipeline.

Would suit someone who is interested in planets, observing, data reduction. Useful skills would be general unix, IRAF, mysql, sextractor.

The velocity fields measured for the gas in spiral galaxies generally show evidence for "kinematic warps" superimposed on the systematic disk rotation.  This study of warps can involve some combination of 1) literature review, 2) addition of new galaxies to the existing database, 3) development of analysis tools, and 4) study of the galaxy sample.

White dwarfs are the remains of Sun-like stars. Carbon-oxygen white dwarfs in binary systems can lead to Type Ia supernova explosions. Of particular importance for explosion and stellar nucleosynthesis models are the composition and mass of the C-O white dwarf and these quantities are determined by star's evolution prior to it becoming a white dwarf.

The student will compute stellar evolutionary models for white dwarfs having progenitors in the mass range from ~1.0 to 8 Msun. The student will examine the influence of the asymptotic giant branch phase, metallicity, convection and the latest experimental nuclear reaction rates on the internal structure of the C-O white dwarfs.

Using state-of the-art simulations, this project aims to examine the history and future of our very own star, the Sun. You will make calculations examining the change in brightness and temperature over the course of the Sun's life. You wil examine how the Sun's size (or radius, to be precise) changes with time, and determine if the Earth is to be swallowed at any point in the Sun's future. In particular you will examine the effect of the latest opacities tables on the theoretical predictions.

Andromeda (M31) is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own. Comparing the properties of its system of globular clusters againstthose for similar objects in the Milky Way offers an important means of investigating differences in the formation and evolution of the two galaxies. Recently, a vast amount of new data on M31 globular clusters has become available from (i) the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey of the M31 halo and its spectroscopic follow-up, and (ii) the HST Multi-Cycle Treasury project imaging the M31 disk. Opportunities exist for a summer student to utilise various subsets of these data to study the characteristics of a variety of globular clusters in M31 (such as their ages, metal abundances, and structural parameters).

Since the Hubble Deep Field was originally observed, coordinated observations of "deep fields" have become the basis for much of contemporary cosmology research. Most recently, the CANDELS project is using the Wide-Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope to extend the wavelength coverage of well-studied deep fields into the near-infrared J and H bands (to a wavelength of 1.65 microns).

The Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager is being commissioned on the Gemini South telescope with the new CANOPUS Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system. We have 20 guaranteed nights using this instrument over the next three years. A major part of that may be used to observe the CANDELS Deep Fields in the longer wavelength K band (2.2 microns). GSAOI will have similar high angular resolution to the WFC3 data because of the correction of atmospheric image blur provided by the revolutionary CANPOUS adaptive optics system. However, CANOPUS requires asterisms of three natural guide stars within its field for the AO system to function.

This project will use existing software to identify suitable guide stars within the CANDELS deep fields, quantify how well GSAOI/CANOPUS will perform with these guide stars, and decide which fields are best suited for observations. Known information about the high-redshift galaxies in these fields will be accumulated so we can build the science justification for committing a large amount of Gemini time to this project.

The student should have an interest in the formation and evolution of galaxies, and basic computing skills.

The WiFeS Integral-Field Spectrograph on the 2.3 m telescope has been used to measure spectra of starbursting galaxies that resemble forming galaxies at high redshift. They have the same high velocity dispersions (i.e., emission-line widths) as objects we have observed with the Keck and Gemini telescopes. Rather than being a property of forming galaxies, it is looking like these high gas velocity dispersions are a property of intense starbursts. Young stars heat the gas and may be expelling it in turbulent outflows. These outflows should be shocked, so we want to know whether their emission-line spectra indicate shock emission, and if so, how much of the Halpha emission that is attributed to star formation is actually powered by these shocks.

We have WiFeS blue and red spectra of a sample of starbursting galaxies. However, accurately removing the sky emission using the standard IRAF package has proved to be complex and time consuming due to the format of integral-field spectrograph pattern on the detector. I propose to develop a program for fitting the spectral-line curvature over the whole image, and streamlining the transformation of the 2D data into a 3D datacube. Then we will be able to extract fluxes for a range of emission lines.

The program will use OpenMP routines to take advantage of multi-processor computers to speed the reduction. This will form the basis for a future fast data-reduction pipeline for the GMT Integral-Field Spectrograph being designed at RSAA.

The student should have basic programming skills and an interest in programming.

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are bright point-like sources found in the centres of a fraction of galaxies. The current theory is that AGNs are formed by accretion of matter onto a supermassive black hole. The evolution of AGNs and their host galaxies are likely to be tightly coupled via fuelling and feedback: On the one hand, the host galaxy provides the fuel reservoir for the AGN accretion process. On the other hand, radiation and outflows from the AGN have an effect on the gas in the host galaxy.

Integral field spectroscopy is an observational technique which provides simultaneous spectra from different parts within a 2-dimensional field of view. This technique is optimally suited for spectroscopic studies of extended objects like AGN host galaxies. Using the Wide Field Spectrograph WiFeS at the ANU 2.3m telescope at Siding Spring, integral field data for a number of AGN host galaxies were observed. Depending on the student's interests, projects with focus on the reduction, analysis and/or modelling of these data are available. The projects will require basic computational skills.

White Dwarfs are small, dense stars that are formed by the evolution of normal stars. Sometimes these White Dwarfs explode, caused by the same physics at work in thermonuclear bombs. We see these explosions as short-lived astronomical objects ("supernovae") that are a billion times brighter than the Sun. To understand these supernovae we have to analyse the light we observe from them. One key question is how massive were the white dwarfs that exploded?

To help answer this question, the student will run computer simulations that predict how key properties of the explosion (particularly the white dwarf mass) affect the spectrum, colours and birghtness evolution of supernovae. By analysing the results of these simulations, we will be able to better understand how to use observations of real supernovae to determine some of the physical characteristics of the exploding stars.

Stars that are carbon-rich but iron-poor are believed to have formed in binary star systems. In these systems, the more massive star evolved to the point where it was able to produce carbon (and certain heavy elements like barium and lead). This point in a star's life is known as the asymptotic giant branch. During this phase, strong stellar winds strip away the surface of the star and some of this lands on the companion star. But the abundances of some of the light elements (like lithium, carbon and fluorine) do not match the predictions of stellar models. It is proposed that some unknown processes is able to mix material in the asymptotic giant branch star to regions of the star where nuclear burning can take place, and so modify the star's composition. In this project, you will use a stellar evolution code to calculate how deep and how fast this mixing has to be in order to reproduce the observed abundances. We will then look for physical processes that could bring about this mixing.

HERMES is a world-first instrument being built for the 4m Australian Astronomical Telescope in NSW.  It is a multi-object, fibre-fed spectrograph, capable of taking stellar spectra for ~400 stars at once!  This instrument will have an automated analysis pipeline to enable fast determination of stellar temperatures, gravities and abundances.  Help us develop this pipeline by undertaking some crucial work needed towards the abundance determinations and give HERMES a helping hand!