My research focuses on automating transient follow-up observations and understanding the structure of the Milky Way.
The Bright Transient Survey (BTS) relies on visual inspection ("scanning") to select sources for accomplishing its mission of spectroscopically classifying all bright extragalactic transients found by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). BTSbot provides a bright transient score to individual ZTF alert packets using their image data and 14 extracted features. BTSbot eliminates the need for scanning by automatically identifying new bright transient candidates.
We consider the application of Jeans modeling to mapping the dark matter distribution in the outer reaches of the Milky Way using field halo stars. To do so, we develop a novel non-parametric routine for solving the spherical Jeans equation by fitting B-splines to the velocity and density profiles of halo stars and an MCMC-based subroutine that deconvolves observational effects from the underlying distributions.
We observe four target merger galaxies in H-alpha to calculate their star formation rate densities and compile previously observed data giving us their gas surface density. With these two quantities, we can investigate how various merger galaxies stand in relation to non-mergers with respect to the Kennicutt-Schmidt law.
I undertook a project rebuilding the Galaxy, Halos, Outer disks, Substructure, Thick disks and Star clusters (GHOSTS) HST survey website. I noted inefficiencies in the source of the current version and designed a rebuild to correct for these and improve expandability.