Analyzing Different Categories of Stars and Star-like Objects Within the Dark Energy Survey's Camera System
Session Number
R884
Advisor(s)
Douglas Tucker, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Location
A-113
Start Date
28-4-2016 10:15 AM
End Date
28-4-2016 10:40 AM
Abstract
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) was designed to discover the effects of Dark Energy throughout the known universe. Dark Energy is an unknown property which causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. The DES seeks to measure redshift, the elongation of light by objects traveling away from an observer. DES analyzes the relative brightness of objects using 5 filters to create infrared/nearinfrared spectra and determines how colors of objects change with redshift. During my previous investigation, I studied DES data and discovered that some objects had different color patterns than others. This SIR, I sought to discover what these objects were. At first, I suspected that they were active galactic nuclei, the centers of galaxies, but quickly found that these only accounted for some of the unusual data. I then learned that these objects could instead be white dwarf binary pairs of stars and plotted the redshifts of those objects. Graphing the colors of these pairs against the DES data showed that my hypothesis was correct. In summary, my results indicate which classes of stars exhibit unusual data patterns in the DES Camera filter system confirming trends in brightness of the DES data.
Analyzing Different Categories of Stars and Star-like Objects Within the Dark Energy Survey's Camera System
A-113
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) was designed to discover the effects of Dark Energy throughout the known universe. Dark Energy is an unknown property which causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. The DES seeks to measure redshift, the elongation of light by objects traveling away from an observer. DES analyzes the relative brightness of objects using 5 filters to create infrared/nearinfrared spectra and determines how colors of objects change with redshift. During my previous investigation, I studied DES data and discovered that some objects had different color patterns than others. This SIR, I sought to discover what these objects were. At first, I suspected that they were active galactic nuclei, the centers of galaxies, but quickly found that these only accounted for some of the unusual data. I then learned that these objects could instead be white dwarf binary pairs of stars and plotted the redshifts of those objects. Graphing the colors of these pairs against the DES data showed that my hypothesis was correct. In summary, my results indicate which classes of stars exhibit unusual data patterns in the DES Camera filter system confirming trends in brightness of the DES data.