Research
I have recently moved to New Hampshire to start as a PhD student at Dartmouth College. I'm excited to start this new research journey, and continue to learn about galaxy mergers, dwarf galaxies, and stellar halos. I'm primarily going to be working with LSST mock observations and real data, trying to understand what we can learn about the merger history of dwarf galaxies in the Local Volume.
I am broadly intersted in how galaxies grow and evolve through studies of their stellar populations and gas content. I have undertaken various projects to learn about galaxy mergers and interactions, as well as studies of gas and stellar dynamics, that are described below:
The Stellar Halos around LMC-Mass Galaxies - Detectability
I have recently begun my first project as a PhD student at Dartmouth College, working with Professor Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil. We are mock resolved-star observations of LMC-mass galaxies selected from a suite of cosmological simulations to predict what substructures will be detectable in their stellar halos in upcoming LSST data releases. This is part of a larger project in collaboration with scientists at the University of Washington, Grinnell College, Rutgers University, and the CCA to understand the merger histories of dwarf galaxies in the cosmological context, with the goal of learning about the nature of dark matter and the processes that govern the evolution of the smallest galaxies in the universe.
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 am now looking at turbulence in star forming regions within the Milky Way. 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 weeks.
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 Spiral 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 using the two telescopes at MDM, 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 and/or reproduce the theoretical stellar mass/halo mass relation. 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's Tidal Tails
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, as well as resolved stellar populations. 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 in both its tidal tails and central concentration 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 Hubble Fellow at STScI. Various posters, presentations, and talks that I have given on this galaxy can be found on my Presentations page. A publication has been submitted and can be found on the arxiv.