Vacation Scholarships in Astronomy at CAS
The Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing (CAS) accepts applications for Vacation Scholarships from enthusiastic university students with excellent scholastic records who are in the last, or second last, year of their undergraduate degree.
With more than a dozen research faculty and over 30 post-docs and PhD students, CAS is a vibrant, friendly environment for studying most fields of astronomy. Swinburne astronomers have guaranteed access to the twin Keck 10-m Telescopes in Hawaii - the world's premier optical observatory - and CAS owns and operates one of Australia's most powerful supercomputers - The Green Machine. We also develop advanced immersive 3D data visualization facilities and create 3-D animations and movies promoting and explaining astronomy to the broader community.
Swinburne's Hawthorn campus is situated in a lively, urban setting just minutes by public transport from Melbourne's city centre.
Our Vacation Scholarship program aims to provide undergraduate students with some insight into how exciting research is and how it is conducted. Students will join a research project, or maybe help start a new one, in one of the many areas of astronomy in which CAS staff and post-docs are experts. The various projects on offer are listed below. Projects can involve all aspects of astronomical research, from proposing or carrying out new telescope observations, to analysing some of the data or conducting theoretical calculations or advanced simulations. Many previous students have eventually published peer-reviewed research articles on some of their Vacation Scholarship research.
Applications can be made at any time throughout the year. We particularly encourage applicants to work over the summer months, December to February.
For the period December 2009 to February 2010, we ask for applications to be submitted by the 30th September 2009.
This program is open to undergraduates at Australian & New Zealand universities. Applications from students outside of Australia & New Zealand with exceptional scholastic records may also be considered.
Scholarships will generally last between 6 and 10 weeks, to be negotiated between the student and their nominated supervisor. Vacation Scholars are paid a tax-free stipend of $500 per week. CAS will also pay for one return trip from within Australia & New Zealand to Melbourne.
The usual eligibility requirement is that applicants should currently be undertaking a BSc or similar degree.
Applications should include the following:
The cover letter is important and should
(i) set out why you are interested in undertaking a vacation scholarship at Swinburne and
(ii) list at least two research projects you are interested in working on. See below for the current list of projects on offer.
Potential Vacation Scholarship research projects
The following list outlines particular projects currently on offer. Contact the staff member(s) listed for more information. Other projects, not listed here, may be possible; contact the staff member whom you feel is most suited to your ideas and discuss other possible projects of mutual interest.
(Updated 20/08/2009)Finding the brightest quasars in the sky. A long-time ambition (dream?) of many cosmologists is to watch the expansion of the Universe change in real time by tracking the drift of galaxies caught up in the Hubble flow. This effect is so tiny that it requires the future generation of optical telescopes -- the so-called Extremely Large Telescopes -- to observe distant quasars at two epochs 20 years apart! Even then, only some of the brightest quasars in the sky would be useful for the experiment. This project aims to identify bright objects in large sky surveys which are likely to be distant quasars. If several candidates can be identified, the student may propose observations on the Gemini 8-m telescope to confirm that the candidates are really quasars and to measure their redshifts spectroscopically. Supervisors: Dr. Michael Murphy & Dr. Glenn Kacprzak
Gas-rich dwarf galaxies. The discovery of the lowest luminosity gas-rich dwarf galaxy, Leo T has sparked a renewed interest in gas-dominated satellites of the Milky Way and Local Group of galaxies. The number of galaxies in the Local Group predicted by cosmological simulations is typically of the order of hundreds - far more than the number detected to-date. This project will address the issue of the how many gas-rich dwarf galaxies exist in orbit around the Milky Way. The student will use neutral hydrogen data from the Galactic All Sky Survey conducted with the Parkes Telescope. Supervisor: Dr. Emma Ryan-Weber.
HI in the Ursa Major Cluster. This project will look at 21-cm data for the Ursa major cluster. The student will catalogue and find new galaxies, and look at the gas content of the galaxies within the cluster. On-line optical data will be used to determine if any galaxies are gas-deficient, and to investigate interactions that might be going on in the cluster. Supervisor: Dr. Virginia Kilborn.
Optimization of an Airglow Filter for the distant Universe.An airglow filter could allow the discovery of very high redshift z>7 star-forming galaxies but is a challenging instrumentation problem. Finding the best design for such a device at a given manufacturing cost is an interesting mathematical problem to be coded via genetic or Monte-Carlo algorithms. Supervisors: Prof. Karl Glazebrook & Dr. Paul Stoddart (Applied Optics).
Probing the Globular Cluster Systems of External Galaxies. Globular Clusters are the oldest stellar systems known, and hence the astronomical equivalent of fossils. This project will utilize wide field images taken with the Subaru 8m telescope to extract important information about galaxy formation from these ancient fossils. Interesting results may be followed up with the Keck 10m telescope. Useful skills in imaging analysis and object detection will be obtained. Supervisors: Prof. Duncan Forbes and Dr Lee Spitler. Supervisors: Prof. Duncan Forbes & Dr. Lee Spitler
The distribution of galaxy mass. A fundamental ingredient to our understanding of galaxy assembly is the galaxy mass distribution in the local universe. What we would like to do is to measure the total DYNAMICAL mass of stars and dark matter by measuring galaxy rotation ('circular velocities'). The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) offers a very large sample for potentially doing this over a representative cosmic volume. The project is to see if SDSS emission line widths can be calibrated to yield circular velocities and, if so, to determine the 'circular velocity distribution' of the Universe. Supervisors: Prof. Karl Glazebrook & Andy Green.
The mysterious difference between quasar and gamma ray burst sightlines. Quasars are (probably) supermassive black holes sucking in huge amounts of material from the centres of distant galaxies. (Long-duration) Gamma ray bursts are (probably) a type of supernova. Both quasars and gamma ray bursts should be point sources in the sky. And so one should expect to find the same number of galaxies, on average, along the sight-lines to distant quasars and gamma ray bursts. Or so we thought. In 2006, people started noticing that more galaxies were found in absorption against bright background gamma ray bursts than against bright background quasars. So far, no one has explained this mystery. This project aims to address parts of this mystery by looking at special types of quasars to see if the same effect is found. Solving this mystery will undoubtedly mean relinquishing some cherished assumptions about quasars and/or gamma ray bursts, but which assumptions? Supervisors: Dr. Michael Murphy & Dr. Glenn Kacprzak
Tidal stability of molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This project aims to study the tidal stability of molecular clouds in one of our nearest star-forming galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Using the Mopra telescope, we have completed the most detailed LMC molecular cloud survey to date. The resulting catalogue provides molecular cloud properties including mass, density, flux, velocity dispersion and shape. This observational data will be used with the best analytic model for the gravitational potential of the LMC to study how the galax's tidal field affects the stability and star forming properties in molecular clouds. This project will help us understand star formation on galactic scales. Supervisors: Dr. Sarah Maddison & Annie Hughes.
Velocity Dispersion of Red Nuggets. Red nuggets are an interesting new class of very compact massive elliptical galaxies which have be discovered in the early Universe. Their evolution to today is a mystery. The project is to make a composite spectrum of red nuggets, from existing data, compare with the other ellipticals at the same redshifts, and see if the velocity dispersion can be measured. The latter is a key ingredient in solving the problem as different theories make very different predictions for this quantity. Supervisor:Supervisor: Prof. Karl Glazebrook.
What lurks between galaxies? Theoretical models of the Universe predict that the space between galaxies consists of a cosmic web of gas. The next generation of radio telescopes (e.g. ASKAP) are predicted to detect these filaments of gas between galaxies. A challenge for upcoming surveys with radio telescopes is figuring out the best way to detect the neutral hydrogen gas between galaxies. This project will use reprocessed data from the HI Parkes All Sky Survey (HIPASS) to patch together a composite of possible filaments. These filaments have never been detected over the large-scales probed by HIPASS: there's potential to discovery something exciting in this data. Supervisor: Dr. Emma Ryan-Weber.