Research
As a TEXAS Bridge Fellow, I analyze a wide range of data looking for signatures of turbulent kinematics in a plethora of systmes, from cold gas filaments falling into black holes to young stellar clusters and associations in the Milky Way. I'm currently working on the latter, using Gaia and APOGEE survey data of nearby star forming regions to trace how the relative contributions of turbulence, gravity, and supernova feedback change the kinematics of newly formed stars over time. I've enjoyed digging into the data made available by these surveys, and am excited to present this work in a couple talks I have lined up in the next few months.
My research as a undergrad centered around analyzing the stellar halos and tidal streams of galaxies in the Local Volume to understand aspects of their evolutionary history. My favorite part of these experiences has been age dating these diffuse stellar structures, helping to introduce the dimension of time to our understanding of galactic merger events. The majority of this has been centered around the M81 group, using data from the Subaru Telescope's Hyper-SuprimeCam and the Hubble Space Telescope. The most recent chunk of this project has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; you can find an ADS link on my CV.
I am also currently applying to graduate school and would love to combine these two experiences through my reasearch in the future. I love analyzing the small pieces of galaxies to understand the big picture of how these structures form and evolve, and combining my experience looking at resolved stellar populations and stellar/gas kinematics sounds like the ideal place for me to build a career. I am particularly excited by the work done by the PHANGS collaboration.
Turbulence in the Milky Way and Beyond
At UNT as a TEXAS Bridge Fellow, I have began reducing and analyzing multiwavelength data of roughly ten nearby BGCs with the goal of characterizing the turbulence present in gas surrounding their SMBHs. I have throughly enjoyed learning how to work with data from MUSE and ALMA, as well as gaining intuition about turbulence, cooling flows, multiphase galactic atmosphers, and the coupling of multiphase gas. Expect to see this work in a publication this spring!
I'm starting to look at turbulence in star forming regions within the Milky Way as well. Using 6D data from Gaia and APOGEE, as well as SFH and stellar age estimates derived from the Python package sagitta, I analyzed the structure, natal turbulent kinematics, and expansion trends in these young clusters, as well as how these properties evolved in time over different star forming periods. I'm always excited to understand the temporal evolution of galaxies and their constituent pieces, and a publication will be submitted on this topic in the coming months.
The Stellar Halos and Tidal Streams of M82 and NGC 3077
In the summer of 2023, I started working with deep, wide field Subaru data of M82 and NGC 3077. These two galaxies, also in the M81 group, are known to be interacting with M81 itself. However, we do now know the star formation or dynamical histories of these two galaxies, making the nature of their outskirts as well as their evolutionary paths a mystery. Through analyzing the end of star formation and global metallicity of these faint structures around these galaxies, I found that M82 accreted a SMC-sized satellite about 6 Gyr ago, and that NGC 3077's progenitor posessed strong population gradients in its outskirts before being tidally disrupted by M81. With this information, we were ultimately able to constrain the past, present, and future merger/interaction history of the three most massive galaxies in the M81 group. This work has been published in the Astrophysical Journal; the link can be found on my CV.
Star Formation Regulation in AGN and Non-AGN Sipral Galaxies
During May of 2023, I had the privlidge of living at Kitt Peak National Observatory as part of a unique class offered at UMich. Part of this class was a self directed research project, in which pairs of students picked what to observe, wrote a proposal for telescope time, performed observations, and analyzed and presented the results. My partner and I chose to compare the stellar mass fractions of nearby AGN and non-AGN spirals, to see if we could detect a difference in stellar mass between these two populations. We were able to reproduce the theoretical predictions of stellar mass fractions for galaxies in the mass range we observed, but could not detect a difference between the AGN and non-AGN galaxies. A link to the poster we made for this project can be found on my Presentations page.
F8D1
F8D1 holds a special place in my heart, as it is the galaxy that led to my passion for learning about galactic interactions and mergers. This galaxy is an Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy (UDG) at the outskirts of the M81 group, and exhibits an intersting set of characteristics. UDGs generally are thought to have little to no recent star formation, I have found evidence that this galaxy had a burst of star formation roughly 2 Gyr ago, corresponding to its most recent pericentric passage around its host. This is currently being incorperated into a paper led by Dr. Adam Smercina, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington. Various posters, presentations, and talks that I have given on this galaxy can be found on my Presentations page.