GeminiFocus 2017 Year in Review | Page 84

A recent graduate of New York ’ s Stony Brook University , Tyler Cohen has spent four months at Gemini North analyzing Hubble Space Telescope images of the distant galaxy cluster XMM2215 . He performed basic photometry on these images to derive colors for each galaxy in the field . These results were then used to select a sample of galaxies for further study as part of a larger program led by mentors Inger Jorgensen and Kristin Chiboucas . Tyler gave a presentation to Gemini staff on his results in February .
Sylvia Kowalski graduated from the University of Washington in 2016 and recently completed her six-month program as a Public Information and Outreach Intern in Hilo . Her work focused on creating events and curricula that bring the wonders of the Universe to groups not as frequently exposed to science topics . A few of the great events Sylvia organized during her internship include the Astronomy on Tap night at the Hilo Town Tavern ( see item on page 92 ), free science nights at public libraries and schools across the island , and multimedia outreach through the Gemini blog .
Grace Lawrence came to us from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne , Australia , during the 2016 Southern Hemisphere summer break and interned with Morten Andersen at Gemini South . She used Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System near-infrared observations , in conjunction with Hubble Space Telescope data , to investigate the massive , young , and local Galactic cluster Westerlund 1 . During her ten-week stay , Grace applied crowded field photometry techniques to resolve the low mass stellar population to the brown-dwarf limit ; she also performed preliminary disk fraction measurements .
​Daniel​ Muthukrishna received his Bachelor of Science in Physics and Engineering from the ​University of Queensland , Brisbane , Australia​ . He just completed a ten-week project at Gemini South , working with Veronica Firpo , to analyze the internal kinematics of giant Hii region candidates in interacting galaxies . This program involved developing an open-source Python software package to model emission lines using multiple Gaussian components . The software automates the process so that all emission lines ( in any number of spectral regions ) can be modeled , and the corresponding luminosities , star-formation rates , and other region properties can be extracted .
82 GeminiFocus January 2018 / 2017 Year in Review