After plotting psr_0329_54 in skynet’s plotting software I was able to Sonify the pulsar. I was able to find out the period of the pulsar through this sonification which I ending up measuring .8 seconds ± .1. This data fits perfectly in the error of my data points because the actual period of the pulsar is 0.71452 seconds.
The calibrated pulsar data shows a period of around 0.7 seconds as well. The only issue I had was the Skynet software crashing from putting the entire dataset in at once.
In Module 5A, my partner and I studied the remnants of stellar decay. NGC 5189 is a planetary nebula that has a field of gasses surrounding a white dwarf. The white dwarf is the core of a star that is unveiled when the surrounding matter is stripped from its body. Filters G-prime, R-prime, I-prime, H alpha, S II, and O III were used. Some of the observations collected weren’t of the best focus, so because of this the outcome looks a bit grainy and over exposed, but I’ve gone ahead and highlighted the focal point of the image.
Through this image we can see the gaseous cloud that surrounds a supposed white dwarf, but i personally wasn’t able to make out this object through our imaging.
In Module 6, we used radio observations of the Andromeda Galaxy that we entered into Skynet. The goal was to measure the neutral hydrogen that was already existing in the Galaxy. We used the natural frequency of the hydrogen as well as the Doppler Shift. We also used this to map out the large variety of frequencies that were used. The broadband frequency was between 1420.4 MHz and 14.23 MHz.
In these photos, you can see that the blue section is moving away from us while the red section is coming towards us, which means that the green would be the center of the Galaxy. We then used the photo and the small angle formula to calculate the speed of the spin rate and the mass.
In module 6 I took radio observations of Andromeda. I measured the neutral hydrogen that was present within the galaxy. I used the natural frequency of the hydrogen and the doppler shift to map out the range of frequency. The broadband frequency range was 1420.5 MHz to 1422.9 MHz. As you can see in the image I generated the blue section is moving away from us, the red section is coming towards us, and the green/teal area would be the center.
By utilizing simple physics equations I was able to determine the speed of spin to be around 211 km/s. Now that I knew the speed I was able to use the small angle formula find the radius to then let me solve for the mass. I found the mass to be around 8×10^41 kg or 4×10^12 solar masses. Thats a super heavy object moving at a very fast rate.
Brandon Christmas, Joe Corrigan
Velocity Mapping of Andromeda
In this module we observed the presence of neutral hydrogen inside of the Andromeda Galaxy. We wished to find out how fast parts of Andromeda were moving towards or away from us. To do this we utilize the doppler shift in neutral hydrogens natural frequency of 1420.4 MHz. If the gas is moving towards us then it will have an appeared faster frequency and the inverse if its moving away from us. We directly looked for a range of frequency in a range of 1380.4 MHz to 1460.4 MHz. This covers the range of the doppler shift that will allow us to map whether the gas is shifted one way or another. The Image above is what we constructed when we mapped the different frequencies to Red, Green, and Blue. Red is moving towards us and Blue is away from us. From those colors we can conclude the andromeda is rotating clockwise on its axis.
Brandon Christmas and Joe Corrigan
In this module we studied stellar remnants. The kind of stellar remnant we observed was a planetary nebula. The particular Nebula we observed was NGC 5189. The gaseous cloud structures of Planetary nebulae form when a star around the mass of the sun blows off its outer shell at the end of its life. It’s core forms into an ultra dense ball of electron degenerate matter called a White Dwarf. Our group utilized Skynet to take these observations. We used the Prompt 5 telescope located at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. We observed NGC 5189 with H alpha, O III, and S II filters with 15 exposures per filter. We then processed the images using afterglow. We stacked the images and aligned them using WCS and Photometry. Finally we added a color map and produced the following image.
Pulsar (psr 1133 16)
Brandon Christmas, Joe Corrigan
Hampden Sydney College
In Module 5B we observed pulsars. Pulsars are category neutron stars that spin severely rapidly causing them to have astrophysical jets that sweep across our line of site at regular intervals, giving them a “pulsing” look . Neutron Stars are the stellar remnants of stars massive enough to collapse due to their own gravity however were not massive enough to collapse into a blackhole. Instead what is left is a ball of the most dense substance in the universe: Neutronium. Neutronium is made up of only neutrons. Neutron stars hold up against gravity using Neutron degeneracy pressure.
This data sheet is what we acquired after making our observations using pulsar Mode. Pulsar mode is a programmed technique that calculates a light curve, the period and does the period folding automatically. The most important information we obtain from this is the period of the pulsar, which is how long it takes to make one revolution. On our case this Pulsar takes 1158 ms which is pretty average.
Joe Corrigan and Brandon Christmas
In this module, we first took observations of Andromeda to map it, using a radio telescope. We did this by using Skynet and the Green Bank Observatory telescope. We used high-resolution spectral mode, and we changed it from mapping 6 beam widths x 6 beam widths to mapping 10 degrees by 10 degrees. Later, we received the images. Then, we processed the images and did containment cleaning and surface model details. Next, we used Afterglow to group the main images together. Finally, we adjusted the image’s brightness and contrast. We made a Doppler color image of Andromeda. We then did the same thing for Messier 82, but instead of using the map type of map, we used the map type of onoff.
In this module, we first took pictures of the star-death region, Crab (M1, Tau A), which is a supernova remnant, using optical imaging. We did this by using Skynet and the Hampden-Sydney College telescope. We used the filters gprime, rprime, and iprime as well as SII, Halpha, and OIII. We set the exposure duration to 80 seconds for the filter gprime, 60 seconds for the filter rprime, and 40 seconds for the filter iprime. We set the exposure duration to 200 seconds for the filters SII, Halpha, and OIII. Unfortunately, we have not yet received any images of Crab (M1, Tau A) yet. Once we get the images, we will process the images using Afterglow. Then, we will stack and align the images. Finally, we will add color to the stacked image.
