Undergraduate Summer Program

Description

Dark Matter 101, by Dr. Anne-Marie Weijmans

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Cosmology 101, by Dr. Adrienne Erickcek

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Nearly 400,000 years after the Big Bang, electrons and protons formed the first hydrogen atoms, and the Universe became transparent. The photons that were released at that time form the cosmic microwave background that we observe today.

The cosmic microwave background reveals three surprising features of our Universe:

1. In its infancy, the Universe was remarkably homogeneous, but there were tiny fluctuations already in place.

2. The spatial geometry of the Universe is flat, even though this is an unstable state and there is not enough matter in the Universe to make it flat.

3. Most of the matter in the Universe is composed of unknown particles.

These observations lay the foundation for the current standard model of cosmology, in which the Universe initially underwent a growth spurt called inflation and is now filled with dark matter and dark energy.

I present a brief history of the Universe, focusing on the evidence for inflation, dark matter, and dark energy in the cosmic microwave background.

I then address the unanswered questions inherent in the standard cosmological model.  What caused inflation?  What is dark matter?  And what is the dark energy that will dominate the Universe's future?

High-Energy Astrophysics 101, by Dr. Rongfeng Shen

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This lecture gives a short, undergraduate level survey of the high energy astrophysics, focusing on the basic concepts, properties of compact objects (mostly neutron stars and black holes) and their associated physics and phenomena.

The second part of the lecture briefly discusses the active research in gamma-ray bursts, one of the most bizarre high energy astrophysical sources.

Galaxies 101, by Dr. Lei Bai

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe and they exhibit a wide range of properties.

In this lecture, I give a broad overview of our current knowledge on these properties and how they constraint the theory of galaxy formation and evolution.

Recent discoveries that challenge our understanding of the galaxy population is also discussed.

Forming Exoplanets 101, by Dr. Mariangela Bonavita

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For decades all our knowledge on planet formation has been based on the observation of the only planets we knew: the ones in our solar system. But the discovery of a large variety of planetary systems around other stars, most of them very different from our own, arose many questions about how these planet formed, some of them still without answer.

In this talk I give a brief overview of the present knowledge about planet formation, starting from our solar system and then moving to the extra-solar planets, trying to answer the following questions:

• Is there a theory able to explain both the characteristics of the planets in our solar system and the ones around other stars?
• Are all the planetary systems created in the same way or is there more than a mechanism to form a planet?
• How big is the impact of the characteristics of the host star (mass, presence of stellar/sub-stellar companions, etc.) on the planet formation process?

Pulsars 101, by Dr. René Breton

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Meet the family: neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars …

Neutron stars are among the most extreme objects populating our Universe and represent one of the ultimate evolutionary stages of massive stars that explode in supernovae.

These stellar remnants are small — 10 km in radius — but have densities comparable to atomic nuclei, and yet can spin at staggering rates of several hundred rotations per second. Most neutron stars are observed as radio pulsars when a narrow beam of radio emission created along its magnetic axis sweeps across our line of sight, similar to the beacon of a lighthouse.

However, the neutron star population is much more diverse and includes magnetars, which are powered by their very large magnetic fields, RRATs, which display transient radio pulsar behaviours, and young isolated neutron stars, which cool down by emitting X-ray thermal radiation.

In this lecture, I guide you through the zoo of neutron stars and explain their main observational properties.

I also describe how neutron stars can be used as tools for astrophysics and physics (measuring distances, testing gravity and relativity, detecting gravity waves, physics of ultra-dense matter, etc.)

Detecting Exoplanets 101, by Dr. Nicholas Law

The pace of extrasolar planet discovery has reached exhilarating levels, enabled by new technology, new telescopes, and new methods of finding planets.

I describe the wide range of cutting-edge techniques being used to find and characterize planetary systems, the new instruments being built for the next generation of planet searches, and finally take a brief look at the far future of exoplanet science.

Star Formation 101, by Dr. Koraljka Muzic

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In this lecture, I give an overview of the main ingredients and the physical processes that are necessary to create a new star. We will follow our future star at different stages of its development, from the fragmentation of its parental molecular cloud all the way towards the start of its life at the main sequence.

I present observations of different phenomena associated with the star formation process.

Finally, I introduce some of the challenging topics that form an active part of the current astrophysical research, such as the formation of massive stars and brown dwarfs.

Communicating Science 101, by Dr. Johannes Hirn

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The same online technologies that pulled the rug from under the traditional media also enable universities to step in and fill the information gap.

This situation brings more opportunities for the next generation of scientists to communicate with the public, especially in places —such as the Dunlap Institute— that encourage outreach besides research and teaching.

By giving you basic written, spoken, and visual communication tips, this talk should help you prepare for such a career, and hopefully convince you to enrol in a writing or acting class.

Instrumentation 101, by Dr. Suresh Sivanandam

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New developments in astronomical instrumentation open entirely new discovery spaces in astronomy. In fact, new instrumentation has often been the driver of very important discoveries.

I discuss the physical processes that directly affect our ability to detect and characterize astrophysical objects.

I  also give a brief overview of the types of instrumentation commonly used in astronomy such as imagers and spectrographs. Finally, I will discuss future ambitious instrumentation projects that will shape the scientific landscape over the next 10 years.

Credit: TMT Observatory Corporation

Stellar Systems 101, by Dr. Markus Janson

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Although our own Solar system only contains one star, many stellar systems include two stars (binaries), or an even greater number of stellar components.

In this lecture, we discuss the variety of architectures of stellar systems, addressing questions such as what fraction of stellar systems are multiple, and how the stars in a multiple system orbit each other. Some emphasis will be put on explaining Kepler's laws of celestial motion, which can be used as a basis to understand the orbits of everything from stars to planets to moons and man-made satellites.

Finally, we will examine how the study of binary systems has been, and remains, crucial to the determination of the fundamental properties of stars.

Credit: M. Janson / AstraLux team

Stars 101, by Dr. Anne-Marie Weijmans

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This lecture will be an introduction to stars and stellar evolution, and will provide you with some background for subsequent lectures, as well as make you familiar with some definitions which you will hear during e.g seminars and astro-ph discussions.

We first talk about the properties of stars, their burning mechanisms and what makes a star a star. Then we will discuss spectral classification of stars and stellar types. Before heading into stellar evolution, we will first study the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram and discuss its many applications in astronomy.

We also make a short detour into cosmology and discuss the importance of the so-called Cepheid stars. Finally, we'll look at stars at the end of their lifetime and the remnants that they leave behind.

Credit: SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Aida Ahmadi is an undergraduate student at the University of Calgary.

For her summer research project, she came to UofT's Dunlap Institute to work with Dr. Nicholas Law and search for planets around cool stars.

One way to perform this search is to watch a sample of those stars and wait to see if a planet passes in front. To improve the odds of seeing something, Aida wrote programs to remove artefacts in the observations made by telescopes.

Aida also helped Dr. Law build and test a wide-field camera to be installed on the Canadian Arctic's Ellesmere Island in the fall. Looking at a large patch of the arctic sky during the months-long winter night, this camera should follow stars visible to the naked eye, hopefully finding planetary transits that haven't been noticed during shorter nights.

Mélanie is a master student in Physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan in France.

For her summer research project, she studied the shape of galaxies to understand how they evolve with time and why the galaxies we observe today are different from the galaxies in the past.

In practice, Mélanie used computer programs to look at over a million galaxies catalogued in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, then used statistics to compare their ellipticity and find out what they look like in 3D.

Shenglin Jing is a student in the Astronomy/Physics specialist program at UofT.

As part of his summer research project with Dr. Suresh Sivanandam, Shenglin studied a galaxy that is falling to the centre of a cluster of galaxies — leaving some gigantic tails along the way.

This happens because, like a cyclist in the wind, the galaxy suffers a drag force as it falls through the hot gas within the cluster. This is called ram pressure, and it can strip the galaxy of its own gas.

The mechanism behind this ram-pressure stripping has yet to be understood. Meanwhile, Shenglin got his hands dirty with real astronomical data for the first time — reducing and analyzing it to obtain a map of velocities.

Mark Ma finished his degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at UofT.

He did his summer research project with Prof. Dae-Sik Moon on astronomical instrumentation, which will allow us to look farther and deeper into the universe.

To help pave the way for new and exciting discoveries, Mark ran tests on an infrared detector to learn how it behaves in a wide range of conditions.

A detector is to the telescope what the CCD is to a point-and-shoot camera: to build a camera or telescope that delivers good images, it is essential to understand how the detector works.

Elliot Meyer, was a 4th year undergraduate in Physics at UofT, has always had a deep interest in Astronomy.

For his summer research project, he tested Dr. Nicholas Law's computer programs to check that they achieved what they were supposed to, i.e. find exoplanets.

To do this, Elliot made up fake numbers as they would come from an actual telescope, including observations of planets passing in front of their host star and stars orbiting each other.

When this was done, Elliot fed this fake data into Dr. Law's programs, and made sure these programs singled out planetary transits where there were some, and didn't see any where there were none.

Stefania Raimondo is a student of Engineering Science at UofT and decided to do a summer research project in Astronomy to satisfy a long dormant interest in the topic.

She worked with Professor Dae-Sik Moon, designing optics to test and adjust the detectors of the future Thirty Meter Telescope.

Stefania used computer software to design and analyze lenses and optical systems.

She also worked on the mechanical systems that will hold and move the lenses.

Emil Terziev is an undergraduate student in Physics and Astronomy at UofT.

For his summer research project, he helped Dr. Nicholas Law search for planets orbiting the smallest, coolest stars: M-dwarfs.

The long lifespan of these stars gives ample time for life to develop on planets orbiting them. To be warm enough to be habitable, planets around such cool stars would have to orbit close to their host star, and thus pass often between us and the M-dwarf.

This is the kind of event Emil was looking for, writing programs to sort out planetary transits from less-interesting lookalikes.

Ritchie Zhao is a student in Engineering Science at UofT, with a desire to get practical experience with advanced scientific instruments.

As a summer research project, he worked with Prof. Dae-Sik Moon on a component to test and adjust the detectors of the future Thirty Meter Telescope.

In practice, Ritchie used the Zemax software to design the best shapes and arrangement of lenses to test these detectors.

Max Millar-Blanchaer has undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Queen's University, and will be beginning graduate studies in astronomy in the fall at UofT.

He is interested in instrumentation, exoplanet discovery, galaxy evolution and supernovae.

Max did a summer research project working in Prof. Dae-Sik Moon's lab, working on detector characterization for the Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph (WIFIS), a next generation spectrograph in development here at UofT.