Astronomy

Abstract: Dusty debris disks that orbit main sequence stars are comparable to our Solar System’s Kuiper belt. While debris disks have less gas than their younger counterparts, a surprising, recent discovery by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is that many of these debris disks do in fact have substantial reservoirs of molecular gas. This … Read more

Abstract: Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are supermassive black holes in galaxies which are seen accreting material, making them glow brightly across the electromagnetic spectrum. Seyfert galaxies are a subset of AGN which show strong accretion activity while residing in a detectable host galaxy. Broadly speaking, AGN are classified as type one or two based on … Read more

Abstract: Debris disks are collections of dust around main sequence stars, formed through collisions of planetesimals such as comets and asteroids. Although debris disks are common, only a handful of systems include a disk as well as a directly imaged planet. HD 106906 is a short-period stellar binary, host to an 11 Mjup planet, HD … Read more

Abstract: This project has found evidence of trends in known 3-planet systems with inner planets in a Mean Motion Resonance in an effort to construct a predictive model with the ability to propose periods of possible outer planets in currently known 2-planet MMR systems. Using light curve data collected from the Kepler/K2 mission, periodograms and transit … Read more

Abstract: Protoplanetary disks are disks of gas and dust that surround newly-formed stars. The structure and evolution of these objects determine how planet formation proceeds; studying how protoplanetary disks vary with age, structure, and region will provide us with clues to the origin and properties of planets around other stars and within our own solar … Read more

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link Abstract: Circumstellar disks are flat structures of gas and dust around main sequence stars, analogous to the Kuiper belt in our own solar system. Younger disks tend to be gas-rich, while older disks, called debris disks, tend to be gas-poor. However, gas has been detected in an increasing number of … Read more

Abstract: Protoplanetary disks are disks of gas and dust that surround newly-formed stars. The structure and evolution of these objects determine how planet formation proceeds; studying how protoplanetary disks vary with age, structure, and region will provide us with clues to the origin and properties of planets around other stars and within our own solar … Read more