Extragalactic Astronomy research
Budget: $250 – $750 USD
The goal of your final project will be to demonstrate knowledge in a sub-field of extragalactic astronomy, and propose an observation/experiment/calculation that will contribute to our knowledge of that field. The latter part will require some thought and perhaps some knowledge/background that we have not covered in class.
For the project, you will have do the following:
Select a topic in extragalactic astronomy/cosmology that you are interested in. You'll need to study up on the topic, and then consider not only what the state of knowledge about the topic is now, but what questions/issues remain unanswered.
Write a short research paper on the topic demonstrating that you understand the sub-field that you've selected. This paper need not be very long --- maybe about 4 to 5 pages, but I'll leave the exact length to you. The important part will be to demonstrate your knowledge of the current state of the field . This paper will have a hard deadline.
Propose an observation or experiment that will increase our understanding of the field, and write a telescope/resource proposal to do this work. The form for this is lifted directly from that used by the national observatories. (You do not need to use the exact form -- you can create your own in your favorite word processing environment. But whatever you create should look similar to the National Observatory's form, with the same questions, etc. You are free to propose for any telescope/resource you wish, but the telescope/instrument/facility must be real. Do not propose observations from some mythical facility that may be launched into space in the next millennium.
To give you some idea of what is expected, I have posted a few sample proposals . These are real proposals (though a decade old), and because they are real proposals, not all sections apply to my assignment. The sections that apply to me include:
Abstract: a single short paragraph or two summarizing what you want to do.
Scientific Justification: a one page description of what your project is, and its significance to astronomy. Most astronomical resources are over-subscribed: for the national observatory, the oversubscription is a factor of 4 (i.e., 75% of the proposals get rejected), and for resources such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Telescope, the oversubscription can be greater than 10! The Scientific Justification is where you make your case as to why your proposal is the most important and should be given the time. Again, this section has a hard limit of 1 page (although references and figures can go on 2 additional pages). You will need to condense many of the points you made in your research paper into this small area!
Experimental Design: an (up to) one page description of how the work you propose will address the issue you want to solve, i.e., how exactly the observations or the experiment will help answer the questions laid out in the Scientific Justification.
Technical Description: An (up to) one page description of exactly how will the experiment work. If you are proposing for observations, what objects will you be looking at? Where are they in the sky? How long will the exposures have to be? What telescope/filter combination will you be using? If your project is computational, then how many hours/months of computer time will you need? This is where you prove that your project is feasible.
you will need to learn about what telescopes have what instruments, and what the instruments are capable of, and what they can't do.
For the project, you will have do the following:
Select a topic in extragalactic astronomy/cosmology that you are interested in. You'll need to study up on the topic, and then consider not only what the state of knowledge about the topic is now, but what questions/issues remain unanswered.
Write a short research paper on the topic demonstrating that you understand the sub-field that you've selected. This paper need not be very long --- maybe about 4 to 5 pages, but I'll leave the exact length to you. The important part will be to demonstrate your knowledge of the current state of the field . This paper will have a hard deadline.
Propose an observation or experiment that will increase our understanding of the field, and write a telescope/resource proposal to do this work. The form for this is lifted directly from that used by the national observatories. (You do not need to use the exact form -- you can create your own in your favorite word processing environment. But whatever you create should look similar to the National Observatory's form, with the same questions, etc. You are free to propose for any telescope/resource you wish, but the telescope/instrument/facility must be real. Do not propose observations from some mythical facility that may be launched into space in the next millennium.
To give you some idea of what is expected, I have posted a few sample proposals . These are real proposals (though a decade old), and because they are real proposals, not all sections apply to my assignment. The sections that apply to me include:
Abstract: a single short paragraph or two summarizing what you want to do.
Scientific Justification: a one page description of what your project is, and its significance to astronomy. Most astronomical resources are over-subscribed: for the national observatory, the oversubscription is a factor of 4 (i.e., 75% of the proposals get rejected), and for resources such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Telescope, the oversubscription can be greater than 10! The Scientific Justification is where you make your case as to why your proposal is the most important and should be given the time. Again, this section has a hard limit of 1 page (although references and figures can go on 2 additional pages). You will need to condense many of the points you made in your research paper into this small area!
Experimental Design: an (up to) one page description of how the work you propose will address the issue you want to solve, i.e., how exactly the observations or the experiment will help answer the questions laid out in the Scientific Justification.
Technical Description: An (up to) one page description of exactly how will the experiment work. If you are proposing for observations, what objects will you be looking at? Where are they in the sky? How long will the exposures have to be? What telescope/filter combination will you be using? If your project is computational, then how many hours/months of computer time will you need? This is where you prove that your project is feasible.
you will need to learn about what telescopes have what instruments, and what the instruments are capable of, and what they can't do.