Team Updates, CHARA Run, and Proposals and Papers

It has been a while since I last provided a public update on the teams in which I am involved and even longer since I discuss what I've been up to, so in the next few paragraphs I'll summarize these activities. If you are looking for a team, the MIRA and eps Aur History teams I discuss below can always use more members as they have both have large projects on which assistance will be greatly appreicated.

Teams

The DSLR Documentation and Reduction Team

This is my original team dedicated to making photometry more accessible using consumer-grade cameras that can take RAW images. The most active members of the team have assembled the beginnings of a paper discussing two different ways of calibrating the data, and some experimental results showing the differences between the two methods. Team member Roger Pieri has developed some simulations showing how we would expect the reduction methods to differ which he will publish in a separate document.

The MIRA Fourier Coefficient Team

This team is focused on analyzing data from the AAVSO database on ~400 MIRA variables to generate Fourier Coefficients, identify period-changes, and find multi-mode MIRA pulsation. The team has been closely working with David Benn, the developer behind VStar, to implement and test the necessary features needed to get their science done. A few weeks ago I provided a set of sample stars that could be used as training/test cases. Heinz-Bernd and David have been working diligently on testing these data. Team Leader Jim Bedient has been providing essential guidance to this process and several professional liaisons have been providing valuable feedback.

I should also mention that David implemented and Heinz-Bernd has been testing a scripting environment in VStar which could considerably improve the speed at which stars can be analyzed.

Historical Perspectives

This is one of our smaller teams composed of only three people, including myself. The topic of their research is to investigate how changes in technology / observing methods have improved our understanding of the epsilon Auriage system. A while back I circulated a lengthy list of literature to the team that I regarded as being important to their research objective. Susan and Alice could really use a hand here as there is a LOT of literature that needs to be re-read and a paper developed. If you like history combined with critical thinking this is the team for you!

eps Aur Research

Now specifically focusing on eps Aur. On Oct. 9 we had an observing run at CHARA. With the disk out of the field of view we got our first good look at the F-star. This was also our first run using the recently upgraded MIRC beam combiner which now uses the light from all six telescopes at CHARA yielding very comprehensive UV coverage in very little time. The latest data set shows something interesting is happening on the F-star. What it is, we still aren't sure and need to do some modeling to figure it out.

Dr. Stencel and I have continued our work at IRTF and, along with many other authors, recently published a paper summarizing the in-eclipse infrared observations during this eclipse. I'll reserve this topic for him in a future blog post.

The biggest news on my front is I'm about to publish another paper! Readers of the blogs here may recall the Sproul posts (here, here, and here) in which I outlined the problems I'm attempting to solve in this upcoming paper. I just need to apply a few finishing touches and send it out to my co-authors this weekend for final comments before I submit it to a journal. After it is accepted I'll post it up on ArXiV and provide a more detailed discussion here.

And Proposals

Excitingly while I was out at CHARA I also wrote my first big proposal. This one was for an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship in which I would continue doing work in interferometry focusing on observing a special class of objects and working on image reconstruction and modeling techniques.  This was my first experience writing such a large proposal and even though it was daunting, I pulled it off before the deadline.  I did, of cousre, have input from several people here at DU including Dr. Bob, Jennifer Hoffman; and also from outside sources (Aaron and Michelle) whose advice significanlty improved the proposal.

Well, that's it for now. Clear skies!