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 im-
ages 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 Informa-
tion 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 article on page 31), 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 Mel-
bourne, 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 10-week stay, Grace applied
crowded field photometry techniques to resolve the low mass stellar popula-
tion to the brown-dwarf limit; she also performed preliminary disk fraction
measurements.
Daniel Muthukrishna received his Bachelor of Science in Physics and En-
gineering from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He just
completed a 10-week project at Gemini South, working with Veronica
Firpo, to analyze the internal kinematics of giant H ii region candidates in
interacting galaxies. This program involved developing an open-source
Python software package to model emission lines using multiple Gauss-
ian components. The software automates the process so that all emission
lines (in any number of spectral regions) can be modeled, and the corre-
sponding luminosities, star-formation rates, and other region properties
can be extracted.
April 2017
GeminiFocus
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