Apprenticeship 2017-2018: Nicole Sola

I propose to work with Dr. Travis Rector, an astrophysicist at UAA, on a research project to find novae in the Andromeda Galaxy. We have been awarded two weeks of time in Oct-Nov 2017 on the Kitt Peak National Observatory’s 0.9-meter telescope to search for novae that may have been missed in previous surveys of this galaxy. If awarded this fellowship, I will be able to travel with Dr. Rector to Kitt Peak, Arizona to use the telescope. I will also learn how to analyze the data so that we can find new novae. I will then compare our results to prior surveys to calculate a more accurate estimate of how many novae are in the galaxy every year. This is important to know because novae eject life-supporting elements into space that are used to form new stars and planets. Our results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal; and I will present our work at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) national meeting in June 2018. This project is well aligned with Objective 1.6 in the 2014 NASA Strategic Plan: To discover how the universe works, explore how it began and evolved, and search for life on planets around other stars.