Joyce Coppock's REU homepage (Summer 2006)
Joyce E. Coppock
Duke University

REU program-Summer 2006
Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison
Madison, WI 53706

coppock at astro dot wisc dot edu



Research projects of other REU students

Research Picture

Observations of HI in IC10


Introduction

I am investigating the kinematics and distribution of HI (neutral hydrogen) in the galaxy IC10 , a dwarf irregular in the Local Group. The broad purpose of these observations is to understand the impact of star formation on the interstellar medium (ISM).

My project makes use of data from the VLA (Very Large Array), an array of 27 radio telescopes near Socorro, New Mexico. I use the AIPS (Astronomical Image Processing System) software for data reduction and the kvis and kshell tools in the karma software package for analysis.

Data on this galaxy have already been obtained from the VLA at ~7" resolution. I calibrated a new set of higher resolution (~2") data and merged it with the older data, then searched for signatures of star formation in the HI gas of the ISM.

Optical and H-alpha image of galaxy IC10

Fig. 1 . This is an image of galaxy IC10 from the Lowell Observatory . It contains optical and H-alpha emission, not the HI emission that I am observing. The HI envelope of the galaxy extends much farther than its optical size.



Motivation >