#12: Comparing Photometric and Spectroscopic Redshifts of SNe-Hosting Galaxies in the DES — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
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Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

#12: Comparing Photometric and Spectroscopic Redshifts of SNe-Hosting Galaxies in the DES

Name: Andrew Jocham
Major: Physics
Hometown: Colgate, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Jean Quashnock
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Name: Jean Quashnock
Department: Natural Science
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

Our project involves analyzing the second public data release from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The data release contains information about distant galaxies and Type Ia supernovae. By pairing supernovae with their host galaxies, their photometric and spectroscopic redshift measurements can be measured. In the process of checking the photometric redshifts for accuracy, we found that there are about a dozen galaxies for which there are major discrepancies. The project concerns the properties of these outliers. Querying more data from the DES allowed us to investigate the color, magnitude, and isophotal area as a function of spectroscopic redshift, which is a means of measuring distance. Through our analysis, we discovered that the outlying galaxies tend to be smaller, fainter, and bluer than other galaxies in the data set. The DES has the aim of using galaxy redshifts to model the expansion of the universe and compare it to various mathematical models. This project addresses one anomaly within the data and attempts to explain how and why it arises.

Poster file