Thursday, June 16, 2011

separation calculation

Today I worked on a separation calculation for the binaries. Now that we have their velocities, based on spectral type, and making assumptions about their masses, we can estimate the separation between the M dwarf and the WD.

I have a hard time determining what is a reasonable separation between binaries. The only limit that puts it into perspective is Saurav's binaries which are extremely far apart, which means more than 10^13 meters, as given in one of his papers. So if we're smaller than that, we're okay? We'll see.

I toyed around with my first sample before writing out a more automated code. IDL's inability to work with big numbers makes me miss mathematica a little. Ah well.

I've included the SDSS site on the binary I was looking, just to get an idea of 1) how cool the site is (just plug in plate, mjd, fiber and voila!), and 2) see what the spectrum and actual picture looks like.




Super cool!

Dylan reminded me that when looking at spectra to make sure to note if wavelength is in air wavelength -- good reminder, that actually might make the plot I posted yesterday look a little bit better.


Also worked on writing up some quick summaries about my work for KINSC stuff. It's been difficult knowing how much detail I need to put into explaining astronomy jargon and whatnot, but it's been fun. With a little down time today, I read up a little on astrobites, explored astrobetter and read quite a few articles that warned students from entering grad school in astronomy. Let's gooo.

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