3D Map of Diffuse Interstellar Band Strengths — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

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.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

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

3D Map of Diffuse Interstellar Band Strengths

Name: Emmet Katzer
Major: Physics
Hometown: Trevor, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Julie Dahlstrom
Other Sponsors: n/a
Type of research: SURE
Funding: Carthage SURE Program and National Science Foundation DUE-1660620 (Noyce)

Name: Chance Beaty
Major: Physics
Hometown: Oak Creek, CO
Faculty Sponsor: Julie Dahlstrom
Other Sponsors: n/a
Type of research: SURE
Funding: Carthage SURE Program and National Science Foundation DUE-1660620 (Noyce)

Abstract

Diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are absorption features that appear in star spectra due to material in the interstellar medium, the space between us and other stars. Although DIBs were discovered nearly 100 years ago, their chemical carriers remain unidentified. To place constraints on possible carriers, we explored the 3-dimensional spatial distribution of DIB absorption for known features at 5780, 5797, and 6284 angstroms. We designed and tested a data pipeline using Jupyter notebook, a Python coding environment, to process 23,000 spectra by (1) template division to isolate the DIB features and (2) equivalent width measurement of DIBs 5780, 5797, and 6284. Measurements were then combined with distance data to produce a series of heat maps of DIB strength with position and distance. Final heat map data revealed large DIB presence in the direction of the galactic anticenter, and increased DIB strength at greater distances. However, the spatial representation of the star data did not create high enough resolution heat maps to see many other clusters of DIB presence.

Poster file