PI: Karl Gordon, kgordon@stsci.edu, webpage
Group Website: ISM*@ST
Project Duration: Summer/1 year rotation with potential for thesis project
Project Abstract: I have a number of possible projects that center around the using the BEAST (Bayesian Extinction and Stellar Tool, Gordon et al. 2016, https://github.com/BEAST-Fitting/beast) to fit UV-NIR photometry of individual stars in nearby galaxies. All of these projects included work on the fully open source/development BEAST project. The projects are:
- Improve Stellar Models: The stellar models used in the BEAST are a combination of stellar interiors (evolutionary tracks) and atmosphere models. Updating these models requires some code-refactoring (already started - see https://github.com/BEAST-Fitting/beast/pull/419) and adding in more evolutionary tracks (e.g., MIST, binary evolution) and stellar atmospheres (e.g., BOSZ, new non-LTE Tlusty models). Such improvements need to coded including automated testing and documented. Determining the impact of using different stellar evolutionary tracks/atmospheres using real data would be a critical part of this project.
- MegaBEAST: An ongoing project is to implement a hierarchical Bayesian model for groups of stars based on the results of the BEAST fitting of individual stars. This is the MegaBEAST (https://github.com/BEAST-Fitting/megabeast). The goal of the MegaBEAST is to determine the stellar (star formation history, age-metallicity relation, etc.) and dust (column, average grain size, etc.) maps of nearby galaxies allowing for the study of each separately and in combination. There are a number of projects possible under this topic, from directly working on the MegaBEAST code to determining probabilistic models of star/dust geometries to testing the calculations using simulations and real data.
Student work:
The work would vary by project with the improving the BEAST/MegaBEAST code, applying the results to real data, analyzing the results, and writing a paper. All the projects should result in a student lead refereed paper and presentation at a meeting. Most can be expanded to a larger (thesis) project included analysis of observations, answering multiple science questions, and writing multiple papers.
BEAST graphical model
MegaBEAST graphical model
