Astronomy 505: Galaxies

Time and location:

Course schedule/content (linked lecture slides):

Sept 5 - Introduction to large galaxy surveys - Sara Ellison
Sept 12 - Mysql and databases - Luc Simard.
Sept 19 - Photometric properties of galaxies - Luc Simard
Sept 26 - Practical application of artifcial neural networks in astronomy - Hossein Teimoorinia
Oct 3 - Data manipulation and visualization - Asa Bluck
Oct 10 - Spectroscopic properties of galaxies - Sara Ellison

Reading list

Sept 12 - Forster-Schreiber et al. (2009) on the SINS survey.
Bolton et al. (2006) on the SDSS/HST gravitational lens survey
ALSO! Please see these links for useful background material for Luc's lecture: 1 2 3 4

Sept 19 - Simard et al. (2011) on bulge-disk decompositions in SDSS
Mendel et al. (2014) on stellar mass determinations in SDSS

Sept 26 - Teimoorinia (2012) Spectral classification in the CDFS
Teimoorinia & Ellison (2014) Line flux predictions for SDSS

Oct 3 - Woo et al. (2013) on environmental dependent quenching
Bluck et al. (2014) on bulge mass dependent quenching

Oct 10 - Mannucci et al. (2010) The fundamental metallicity relation
Ellison et al. (2013) properties of post-mergers

Project options (and supervisors)

• Ben: SFRs as a function of morphological properties (Asa). Investigate whether the enhancement of SFR in galaxy pairs (e.g. Ellison et al. 2008, Scudder et al. 2012, Patton et al. 2014) varies as a function of morphological type. We will use new bulge + disk photometric ratios, and stellar masses to separate the host galaxies, and their pairs, into spheroids, composites (high and low B/T ratios), and disks. For this we will use the full sample (as in Qamar et al. in prep.) to enhance the value of looking at different morphologies. Expectation: more spheroid dominated systems will experience less star formation enhancement. But is this the case? Also, how does this vary with major or minor pair?

• Mara: Clustering of satellites around active galaxies (Sara). What triggers an AGN? There is strong evidence that at least some AGN are triggered by mergers (e.g. Ellison et al. 2011; Satyapal et al. 2014 and references therein). However, not all AGN are likely triggered by mergers. In this project, you will investigate whether optical AGN identified in SDSS have an excess of satellite galaxies relative to non-AGN. Recently, this experiment has been done by Pace and Salim (2014) for radio loud AGN and a positive signal found. But is this the case for optical AGN?
• Divya: Does nuclear activity affect the SFR in galaxy mergers (Sara)? As described above, galaxy mergers can trigger AGN and new star formation. However, most metrics that measure SFRs can not be applied to galaxies that have AGN (Brinchmann et al. 2004). However, we have recently used artificial neural networks to predict IR luminosities that can be used to predict SFRs even in AGN galaxies. This project will investigate whether the SFR enhancements seen in AGN galaxies are the same as those without AGN.
• Connor Disk shapes and sizes (Luc Simard, Dave Patton). Determining whether galaxy disks have an intrinsic ellipticity (or not) is pretty fundamental to our formation models. Ryden (2004) a relatively small sample, which can be greatly improved with SDSS. Questions include: does disk ellipticity and thickness vary as a function of, e.g. bulge mass, and local density. Do galaxy-galaxy interactions make disks more elliptical? Or thicker? Or both? Do you have thicker disks for larger bulge stellar mass (Toth and Ostriker 1992)?
• Jared: HI gas consumption in different environments (Sara). We have used ANN to predict HI masses for ~150,000 galaxies in SDSS, which far outstrips the largest measured samples to date (e.g. Haynes et al. 2011; Catinella et al. 2012). In this project, you would investigate gas content as a function of different environments (groups, clusters, mergers) and as a function of AGN activity.

See supervisors for more details. Projects allocated on a first come, first served basis

Assessment and deadlines: