TIGRE

I will talk about a research in astronomy that is cool. It is called The Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment right here at UC Riverside. The primary researcher is Allen Zych. The assistant researchers are Dr. O'Neill, and my mentor Dr. Dipen Bhattacharya.
The Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray experiment uses multi layers of thin silicon strip detectors to convert and tracks gamma rays from .5 to 100Mev.
in the .5 to 10Mev Compton scatter events are reconstructed by measuring the directions and energies of both the scattered gamma ray and recoil electron. electron tracking between silicon layers with direction of motion provides the final information needed to completely reconstruct a unique incident direction for each photon event this facilitates improved background rejection, image reconstruction, and sensitivity. the silicon converter/tracker also serves as an electron positron pair detector for gamma rays up to 100Mev with out the inherent loss of angular resolution characteristic of telescopes with high Z converter materials.

In laymen terms: a gamma ray comes in

it will hit the silicon strip detectors and anything not like a gamma ray w il go all the way through, gamma rays will recoil of the silicon detectors and some will hit the Cesium Iodide detectors on the left, this is how they can distinguish between gamma rays and other background radiation.
This instrument is lifted into the air by a big ass balloon, bigger than 3 foot ball fields.

that is huge. The last launch was in Alice Springs, Australia last year. and it was a success, current analyzing of the data is being conducted.

Just to let you know, when they went to launch in Alice Springs, the other baloon experiment that was being launched by UC Berkeley malfunctioned during lift off. It was released too soon, maybe because a bolt broke, and the experiment that they spent 15years to do, was dragged across the ground, and hit a parked car, and flipped the car over. In the end, the experiment was destroyed, aswell as the car.

The video, was on the news, and here is the link check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcPYwPFZzAc

Change of view of astronomy

The question was proposed in class as to my view of what astronomy is, and has it changed since the beginning of class.
Well, to answer this question in short so I can get full points for this post, my view has not changed.
My view of astronomy has been broadened then defined in detail about different aspects of astronomy.
Astronomers go out and view through telescopes different regions in space, and hope to find something extraordinary such as a supernova or a binary star system. Astronomers still do what I anticipated at the beginning of the class, so my view cannot have changed.
Today, when we think about optical astronomy, we most instantly visualize the amazing images from the Hubble Space Telescope or close up images of the planets taken by various space probes. What most people don’t realize though, is that these images also yield volumes of information about the structure, nature and evolution of objects in our Universe. There are many sub disciplines in astronomy and I will name a few:
Planetary  Astronomy
Solar Astronomy
Stellar Astronomy
Galactic Astronomy
Extragalactic Astronomy
The two best parts of astronomy that I like are Galactic and Extragalactic, only because the names sound cool!
The Milky Way Galaxy is a very complex system of stars, nebulae, and dust. Astronomers study the motion and evolution of the Milky Way in order to learn how galaxies are formed. Astronomers study other galaxies in the Universe to learn how galaxies are grouped and interact on a large scale.
Now that you are informed the different parts of astronomy, which one do you like the best?!

OII emitting galaxies

Around the redshift ranges, z, of galaxies from .5-1.6, how fast does these galaxies convert gas to stars.
A star has gas around it, and the gas is ionized and free electrons are emmitted which is called plasma.
These free electrons collide with oxygen atoms in the gas. When this collision happens electrons in the oxygen atom will move from a higher orbital state to a lower orbital. A photon will be emmited when the electron makes this transaction. The wavelength of this photon is about 3727 angstroms. or 372.7 nm(nanometers).
Astronomers will get a spectrum of galaxies and any galaxy with this wavelength in the spectrum will have a double peak. Now, astronomers will know that it does have oxygen in it, and can use this galaxy in the Schmidt-Kennicutt Law to calculate a star formation rate.
In order to calculate a star formation rate:
You start with the redshift, and find the flux of the galaxy.

From the flux of the galaxy, you can find the luminousity of it.

L(O[II]) = F(O[II]) 4πZ²

From this luminousity  you can calculate a star formation rate.

SFR(M_sunyear^-1) = (1.4 ± 0.4 )x 10^-41 L[OII] (ergs s^-1)

there are other emission lines astronomers look at, but I like OII because its what I work on.!!