Browsing Faculty of Arts and Sciences by Keyword "astronomy"

Now showing items 1-8 of 8

    • Discovery of Giant Gamma-ray Bubbles in the Milky Way 

      Su, Meng (2012-08-09)
      Based on data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, we have discovered two gigantic gamma-ray emitting bubble structures in our Milky Way (known as the Fermi bubbles), extending \(\sim 50\) degrees above and below the ...

    • Dust in Large Optical Surveys 

      Schlafly, Edward Ford (2012-08-03)
      We present results studying the distribution and properties of the diffuse dust in the Milky Way Galaxy using large optical surveys—specifically, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and ...

    • The Dynamics and Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes in Merging Galaxies 

      Blecha, Laura Elizabeth (2012-08-03)
      This thesis is a theoretical study of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in merging galaxies. We consider the dynamics that govern inspiralling SMBH pairs and gravitational-wave (GW) recoiling SMBHs, as well as the fueling ...

    • H-means image segmentation to identify solar thermal features 

      Stein, Nathan Mathes; Stein, Nathan; Kashyap, Vinay L.; Meng, Xiao-Li; van Dyk, David (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2012)
      Properly segmenting multiband images of the Sun by their thermal properties will help determine the thermal structure of the solar corona. However, off-the-shelf segmentation algorithms are typically inappropriate because ...

    • In Pursuit of New Worlds: Searches for and Studies of Transiting Exoplanets from Three Space-Based Observatories 

      Ballard, Sarah (2012-07-23)
      This thesis presents studies of transiting exoplanets using observations gathered in large part from space, with the NASA EPOXI Mission, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler Mission. The first part of this thesis ...

    • Infrared Light Curves of Type Ia Supernovae 

      Friedman, Andrew (2012-09-12)
      This thesis presents the CfAIR2 data set, which includes over 4000 near-Infrared (NIR) \(JHK_s\)-band measurements of 104 Type Ia Supernovae (SN Ia) observed from 2005-2011 using PAIRITEL, the 1.3-m Peters Automated InfraRed ...

    • Magnetic Fields in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds 

      Mao, Sui Ann (2013-02-25)
      This thesis is an observational investigation into the origin of large-scale coherent magnetic fields in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. I use Faraday rotation measure of both polarized extragalactic sources and ...

    • Spin Measurements of Accreting Black Holes: A Foundation for X-Ray Continuum Fitting 

      Steiner, James (2013-01-02)
      Remarkably, an astrophysical black hole has only two attributes: its mass and its spin angular momentum. Spin is often associated with the exotic behavior that black holes manifest such as the production of relativistic ...