Dr. Michael Joner, Physics and Astronomy
Student Participation
Graduate Student
Carla J. Carroll**
Undergraduate Students and Observers at West Mountain Observatory
| Marcus Holden* | Karrie Beckstead |
| Kyle Matt | Andrew Patterson |
| Doug Gardner | Leanne Lunsford |
| Charles Honick | Jared Kruger |
| Emily Stoker (Safsten)** | Marissa Mannard* |
| Sean Pierce |
*Author or Presenter at the American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting
**Author on refereed journal article
Academic Deliverables
Refereed Papers
“Reverberation Mapping of the KEPLER Field AGN KA1858+4850”, Pei, L. Barth, A.J., … Carroll, Carla J., … Joner, Michael D., et al., 2014, ApJ, 795, 38
“A New Contact Eclipsing Binary in the Field of KOI 1152”, Safsten, Emily D., Lara, Pamela, Joner, Michael D., Stephens, Denise C., Rawlins, Joseph, 2015, IVBS, 6147, 1
American Astronomical Society Presentations
“Observational Tests to Detect Photometric Reverberation in H-‐alpha”, Joner, Michael D. and Carroll, Carla J., 2014, AAS #224, 221.07
“Photometric Reverberation Mapping using a Meter-‐class Telescope”, Carroll, Carla J. and Joner, Michael D., 2015, AAS #225, 144.08
“Time Series Photometry of the Variable Stars AN Lyn and UU Lyn”, Lunsford, Leanne Teri, Joner, Michael D., and Hintz, Eric G., 2016, AAS #227, 144.06
“Photometric and Spectroscopic Analysis of the delta Scuti Variable V2455 Cygni”, Mannard, Marissa, Hintz, Eric G, and Joner, Michael D., 2016, AAS #227, 144.07
“Measuring Redshifts of Emission-‐line Galaxies Using Ramp Filters”, Lesser, Ryan William, Bohman, John, McNeff, Mathew, Holden, Marcus, Moody, Joseph, Joner, Michael D., and Barnes, Jonathan, 2016, AAS #227, 349.15
Summary
This Mentoring Environment Grant (MEG) proposed using the Brigham Young University West Mountain Observatory as a mentoring environment where students would experience what it is like to do research at a fully operational observatory by doing a wide variety of observations at regularly scheduled times over the course of several months during the spring and summer terms. The primary project involved making continuous monitoring observations of the active galaxy NGC 5548 in support of a worldwide campaign involving more than a dozen ground-‐based and space-‐based observatories. The larger campaign (AGN STORM) headed by Dr. Bradley M. Peterson (Ohio State University) was designed to investigate different techniques used to identify structures in the core of an active galaxy and then find fundamental parameters about those structures, such as the mass of the central supermassive black hole.
Academic Objectives
It is expected that students will do superior research at the observatory that will not only contribute to the primary monitoring project but will also form the basis of their required senior thesis, and presentations they may make in the form of a published journal article or a contribution at a local, regional, or national scientific conference. In addition to making presentations at the CPMS Spring Research Conference at BYU and the annual APS Four Corners Meeting, we urge our students to also participate in a national meeting, such as the Winter Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. As has been indicated in the list of student participants, two of the students appeared as authors on refereed journal articles and three others made presentations at a national meeting using data that were secured during the time that this grant provided funding.
Mentoring Environment
The mentoring environment at the West Mountain Observatory operated as desired during the course of this project. The observatory provides an ideal environment where students can experience life as a research scientist. In order to successfully operate the observatory to the benefit of all involved, it is necessary that each of the student observers act in a responsible manner and work with the different telescopes to secure observations on a variety of different projects over a time period of about four months during the spring and summer terms. This experience is ideal for teaching about the nature of collaborative science. It is necessary for each observer to learn about setting priorities and scheduling observations so that a large number of different endeavors are supplied with necessary data. During the time covered by this project, observations were secured on every available night with either the 0.3-‐m or 0.9-‐m telescopes at the observatory. It is also instructive for the students to gain experience with normal disruptions to a routine such as unexpectedly poor weather conditions, equipment failures, or even ordinary events such as the changing phase and position of the moon. All these factors provide an education about real-‐world experience as opposed to idealized cases that are much more rare. It is noteworthy that both the summers of 2014 and 2015 had fewer nights that were suitable for research observations than any of the previous five years, due to increased numbers of cloudy nights.
Research Findings
The Space Telescope Optical Reverberation Mapping campaign (AGN STORM) was the primary project being undertaken during the spring and summer of 2014. For this project, the BYU West Mountain Observatory was able to provide optical data in the broadband B, V and R filters for NGC 5548 on 44 separate nights with 53 different epochs. An additional project carried on at the same time (AGN14) was also successful, and the SINGS observers made observations on an additional eight active galaxy targets. The first two papers have been published for the STORM collaboration, but they concentrated on the space-‐based data and did not include West Mountain observations. Papers III and IV in the results series have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and are being refereed. Both of these papers present analysis of the ground-‐based data, including all of the observations secured at West Mountain. Publication of these papers, along with several others that include data from these campaigns, is expected during 2016. In addition, Carla Carroll used the data for NGC 5548 as the basis for the thesis she wrote in order to complete a MS degree. The thesis, titled “A Feasibility Study of Photometric Reverberation Mapping Using Meter-‐Class Telescopes”, was accepted in June 2015. In addition to the B, V, and R data from the STORM campaign, Carla analyzed data taken through a custom H-‐alpha filter to determine a photometric lag time for NGC 5548, as was described in the original SINGS proposal. It is anticipated that this thesis will also be published in a refereed venue during the next year.
Budget Expenditures
It was originally anticipated that Carla Carroll would work as a graduate student mentor part of the time to supervise observations at West Mountain during the time covered by this proposal. However, she accepted an internship in Germany during the summer of 2014 and it became necessary to use a portion of the funds to hire an observations supervisor to ensure that the observatory was being utilized fully. As it turned out, Carla decided to change from a PhD program to a MS program and then moved to Germany in order to complete a PhD program in computational cosmology. Thus, it was necessary to utilize the observing supervisor over both years that funds were expended. For the two years, approximately $10K was used to pay undergraduate student wages, $5K was used to supplement observatory support expenditures of $18K for the observations supervisor position in 2014 and 2015, and $4K was used for travel support to the AAS meetings.