Oops

I've been neglecting my blogging duties, but am now back and better than ever. I've got my velocities de-composed into radial and proper motion flavors, a nice aitoff plot of the galaxy (at least, its disk and bulge), have read about StarFISH and the Field of Streams, and am staring to investigate isochrones to generate stellar populations in the simulations. I've also found the interparticle spacing for the halo at different distances from the galactic center, and have a measure of the physical pixel size in the FoS image, which is, thankfully, smaller than the interparticle spacing. The next steps are to get some proficiency with StarFISH so that we can see if it would be a good way to generate stars for the simulation, and to start doing kinematic "observations"of the simulation.

The kinematic studies are on a slightly different track than I've been on. Recently I've been thinking mostly about a FoS replica and whether that would be feasible, but this will definitely be doable, and should be less complicated. Short-term analysis is looking at proper motions of the particles at different radial distances, searching for differences between accreted and in-situ stars. I'll then do that again incorporating the LSST measurement uncertainties into the 'observations.' Before doing that, however, I'll need to think about stellar tracers (BHB, RR Lyrae and RGB stars) and how to model them in the simulation without generating cmds. More on this as it develops

It's Summertime...

and here I am, back at Haverford. Most of my free time looks to be devoted to studying for the GREs and fencing, but the lion's share of my attention, time and enthusiasm will be taken up by my research.

The best place to start talking about this is the end; what my goals are. For this summer I'll be working with N-body + SPH simulations of Milky Way like galaxies to make predictions for the LSST. The objectives stated are:

1) Develop a method to look at and analyze the simulations from a perspective within the galaxy (like someone on the Earth observing the Milky Way);

2) Do the same, except change the perspective to that of someone within a nearby galaxy (like someone from the Earth observing Andromeda)

Of course, on a shorter timescale (~2 weeks) I've got some intermediate steps:

1) Develop an understanding and intuition of the simulations and write up a summary of this;

2) Learn about the LSST (it's methods, specs, what makes it unique, what it will/won't do, it's likes and dislikes...) and write up a summary of that;

3) Gain some experience and develop techniques for analyzing the simulations in IDL.

So far, I'm reading about the simulations to get a good preliminary understanding of them, reading select bits of the big book of LSST science (the LSST Science Book) and playing around with tipsy, learning how to view the simulations and different aspects thereof.  It's gonna be a busy summer!