Will's Astronomy

Research

Current Research

My research focuses on using the MINERVA survey (insert link) to characterize young globular clusters at high redshift. Globular clusters have been known since at least the time of Edmund Halley, but watching young clusters form has proven immensely difficult. I search for young globular clusters in the MINERVA survey which offers excellent coverage in the rest-frame U-I bands at z<2.

Past Research

How do supermassive black holes impact their host galaxies? This question has been of critical importance for astronomers attempting to understand the longterm evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. During my bachelors studies at UW - Madison, I investigated 194 galaxies hosting X-ray-detected supermassive black holes in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields. These are exciting galaxies, as the immense depth of observations in GOODS allow us to detect heavily-obscured AGN that are more representative of the common galaxy than the bright quasars found all across the night sky.

1-micron normalized SEDs for 194 GOODS AGN Host Galaxies
Figure 1: Left: Cumulative Distribution Function for host galaxy bulge/total light ratios for 194 GOODS AGN. Right: Fraction of AGN host galaxies visually classified as disk-like, spheroid, irregular, and interacting in one of four SED shapes. The SED shapes are a rough tracer of obcuration, with Shape 5 being the most obscured and Shape 1-2 being unobscured. These two plots indicate that spheroids host many obscured AGN.
My paper (under review at ApJ) showed that there is an increased incidence of obscured AGN found in elliptical galaxies. We also found mergers cannot have triggered the majority of AGN, as only around 1/3 of AGN host galaxies have undergone any detectable interactions, and less than 1/10th have undergone major mergers. This effective supports simulation work from McAlpine+2020 and many others indicating that only the most luminous AGN may be directly triggered by galaxy mergers.

Research Interests

  • Globular Cluster Formation
  • Survey Astronomy
  • Active Galactic Nuclei
  • AGN/Host Feedback