| |
    
|
Student Profile: Jennifer Bath
by Erin Davidson
Jennifer Bath has gazed at the stars all her life. As an adolescent, her love of the cosmos inspired her to build a telescope. During her sophomore year at the University, Bath, now a senior in astronomy, received a scholarship from the National Science Foundation which offered her the opportunity to conduct research at the Automated Scanner Lab. After the scholarship term expired, Bath was hired on as a researcher at the lab, which is located at the Tate Lab of Physics on the University's East Bank.
Bath's most recent research deals with images of the night sky taken during the 1950s at the Palomar Observatory in southern California. The images, which compare different parts of the sky without using costly telescope time, were created as part of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.
Bath works with the Automated Plate Scanner Group in using the images from the Palomar Observatory to create databases of the whole sky. The images, captured on glass plates, each represent a length of sky approximately equivalent to that swept by half of a fist when held at arm's length. Two plates are used for each area of the sky.
A red filter is used once, and then a blue filter consisting of 1,000 sets of plates. The colors give information about the stellar age and composition.
The Automated Plate Scanner can detect whether an image is a star or a galaxy and categorize it as such with a high degree of accuracy. It uses extremely sensitive lasers to scan two plates at a time and output a reading which creates the computer image of the plate. The computer image is then cataloged and calibrated so that astronomers can compare different areas and have consistent data. The data obtained from the scanner is also stored on tapes and published on the World Wide Web. "In the end, we have a beautiful map of the stars -- about 75 percent of our galaxy," Bath says.
The Automated Plate Scanner Group includes two groups of astronomers: galactic, with whom Bath works, and extra-galactic. Galactic astronomers study stars, and extra-galactic astronomers work with galaxies. Extra-galactic astronomers use statistical methods to find second-order asymmetries in the galaxy shape, including the distribution of stars in the disk and the halo, the distribution of gas and dust in the galaxy, and the existence of the thick disk.
In her first summer at the lab, Bath began working on the distribution of gas and dust in the galaxy in order to have more reliable data about the stars. Bath likened the gas and dust to "headlights in the fog." Bath worked with Dr. Jeffrey Larson, who has been making models of galaxy shape to match the star counts obtained in the lab. She presented this research along with her gas dust research in Madison, Wisconsin, at the American Astronomical Society's meeting last June.
This year, Bath plans to complete her honors physics and astrophysics thesis with the Automated Plate Scanner Group on either the asymmetries in the galactic halo or on proper motion studies. Her future goals include planetary astronomy and studying the formation of the solar system. She also hopes to someday teach astronomy.
For more information about Jennifer Bath's research and the Automated Plate Scanner lab, visit the website at http://isis.spa.umn.edu.
