In January of 2023, two UNC Asheville seniors had the opportunity to represent the University’s Department of Astronomy and Physics at the largest astronomy conference in the United States: the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, WA. Delaney Carlton and Abdullah Sayed presented interactive posters on their ongoing undergraduate research to attendees.
Carlton has been using quasar spectra to backlight and measure the gas in the halos of foreground galaxies observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s eBOSS Survey. Sayed’s research uses the distribution of metal-enriched gas in quasar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation scale: a “standard ruler” that is used to measure the expansion history of the universe.
“This is the largest annual convening of astronomers in the US, so it's a big opportunity for them to share their work and interact with other experts in the field,” said Britt Lundgren, associate professor of physics. “They did a fantastic job, of course!”
To learn more, read Lundgren's blog post here.
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