Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Astronomy Internship - Day 39

Dr. Twarog is still working on taking a closer look at the variable candidates. I think we've been able to pick out the red giant clump now, all 2-3 stars in it...

What we're trying to do is isolate the red giant stars because it's been demonstrated that the slope of that branch is directly related to the metallicity of a star (ie, the amount of material heavier than helium).

I've also put together a few other HR diagrams from the data using different color indicies to see if that would help anything stand out. It seems that the J, J-K diagram works best but only marginally.

I haven't been getting much done because I've been pretty off in my sleep schedule for some reason. The past two nights I've woken up at 6am shaking and with very strange dreams that start as soon as I try to get back to sleep so I never really get back into a restful stage of sleep. Thus, I'm very far off on sleep right now.

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