Astronomy and Astrophysics
	Astronomy
	Prof. Michael Fitzgerald Planet Formation
	The student will search for extrasolar planets and circumstellar debris disks in high-contrast imaging data from adaptive optics coronagraphs on large ground-based telescopes. He or she will use and modify sophisticated imaging software to search for faint signals in the glare of nearby stars. Experience with IDL, Matlab, or Numerical Python is strongly recommended.
	Prof. Steven Furlanetto Evolution of Telescopes
	Professor Furlanetto's research focuses on theories of the earliest phases of galaxy formation in the Universe and their effects on the material around them and subsequent generations of galaxies. Over the next ten years, a range of instruments - from enormous ground-based near-infrared telescopes to the James Webb Space Telescope to a new type of low-frequency radio telescope - will observe this era and begin to pin down the properties of these exotic structures. Students will be involved in formulating predictions for some of these new telescopes.
	Prof. Andrea Ghez Black Hole and Its Environment at the Galactic Center
	High resolution images of the center of our Galaxy with the world's largest telescopes are giving us an unprecedented view of a supermassive black hole and its environs. Through precision measurement of stellar orbits we aim to address many fundamental questions about the formation and evolution of black holes and galaxies. Possible summer projects include studies of (1) how the observed young stars arrived in this region in which no young stars were expected, (2) how this region was depleted of giants, which were predicted to exist in large numbers, (3) searches for micro-lensing events and (4) simulations of observations with future large ground-based telescopes.
	Prof. Ned Wright WISE Project
	The dinosaur killing asteroid may have been a member of the Baptistina family. The Yarkovsky effect due to asymmetric infrared emission from a rotating body causes asteroid orbits to evolve, sometimes into a resonance that can lead to an Earth crossing orbit. WISE has observed many members of this family, and will have seen a few of them twice. For this set, the asymmetry observed by WISE will be used to estimate the Yarkovsky force.