Week of 7/8 - 7/12, 2013

On my plot for all cluster members in the EDisCS survey, I separated galaxies into "low" redshift z∼0.4-0.6 and "high" redshift z∼0.6-0.8. I say "high" and "low" because in reality, these galaxies are really far away. The "low" redshift galaxies are just a bit closer. Here is my improved graph on EDisCS cluster members:

In addition, I sub-plotted each EDisCS cluster by number of galaxies vs. log10 infrared luminosity. This is the breakdown:

Next week I plan to "fix up" these plots to make them look better as well as create a fits file for infrared luminosity, raw counts, corrected counts, and the error for both counts. I will send this data to Alissa Earle who will fit the luminosity function.

Week of 7/1 - 7/3, 2013

This week was cut sort by Independence Day, but I still accomplished a lot. On Monday, my summer research did a ninety degree turn. I switched from analyzing data from the WISE Survey to picking up Brendan Gallagher's project. My new task is to look at the EDisCS Clusters (redshift 0.4-0.8) and follow mostly the same instructions as I did for WISE. In other words, I have to fit the luminosity functions for galaxies in the field of EDisCS and in the clusters of EDisCS.

In doing this I have to look at the EDisCS catalog filled with photometric and spectroscopic information regarding the galaxies. There are flags built into the catalog which help me separate/choose the galaxies specific to each luminosity distribution.

Week of 6/24 - 6/28, 2013

This week I fit the function for a second sample of luminosity data using chi-squared least squares fitting. The plot looks like this:

On Wednesday, we visited Union College in Schenectady, New York for the June 2013 UAT Summer Research Telecon. Undergraduate students came from institutions including Skidmore, Lafayette, and West Texas A & M to present their research in astronomy. In addition, students phoned in from San Francisco, Hong Kong, and other places to do the same. I learned more about ALFALFA at the conference and a little bit about how the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico works. 

When it was Siena's turn to speak at the Telecon, we presented our work concerning luminosity functions for the WISE, Local Clusters, and EDisCS Surveys. At this point we only have luminosity distributions for the surveys but will be fitting them next week. Debbie Johnson gave a preview of what  the real fitted data could look like in her breakdown of a sample data set like the one pictured above.

On Friday, I worked on adjusting my code for the luminosity distribution for WISE. To clean up the data to be read in, I flagged (in the NSATLAS catalog) only galaxies observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Here is my python code to do this:

And here is the before/after transformation of my plot: