A couple years ago, I started an astrophotography Instagram page. I took some really nice pictures of some planetary nebula and galaxies/galaxy clusters. But I found out that it’s kind of expensive (especially if you’re using remote observatories) and I wasn’t really into it. I’m also more interested in doing research in Astronomy and not Astrophotography, so I decided to make a blog talking about topics in Astronomy that I am interested in.
I recently applied to work at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) as a Science Support Analyst. I was looking at all the missions and projects and saw a mission that looked at Starburst galaxies called The Shocked POststarburst Galaxy Survey (SPOGS). Starburst galaxies are galaxies which show tremendous star formation, much more than what is considered “normal”. Learning more about this type of galaxy and what causes this phenomena could potentially be the next step in understanding galaxy evolution. I am really hoping to be selected, since I’m interested in green valley galaxies which are galaxies like Andromeda that lie in-between spirals and ellipticals in Color Magnitude Diagrams (CMD) like the one below.
I’m reading a paper from the SPOGS team and going to try to see if I can recreate some plots, specifically this one showing the types of galaxies in the survey. A more thorough explanation on that all later.
I’m excited to start to share my results of research and little snippets of code I write. I also plan to add some notes on Physics and Astronomy in the future, when I find time to write the notes I have in LaTeX, which is going to be a pain in the butt! Stay tuned.
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