Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect of EBLM Systems
Variability of Luminous Blue Variable Stars
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Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect of EBLM Systems
Rossiter-McLaughlin Fit of EBLM J0021-16
For the last year, I have been leading a team of undergrads under Dr. David V. Martin to measure the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) Effect in Eclipsing Binary Low Mass (EBLM) star systems. To fit the RM effect in the EBLM systems, we use PyMC3 to run a joint photometric and spectroscopic MCMC algorithm. Within the algorithm, we use code from Gupta (2024) to fit the RM for our systems. We use spectroscopic data from CORALIE and HARPS, and photometric data from TESS.​
In September, we submitted our first result for publication to MRNAS, where we were able to measure the true stellar obliquity of a system (graph on the left). This was possible using the measured rotation rate of the system. In early December, we submitted another paper on sky-projected and true 3D obliquity measurements for five more EBLM systems. This project is currently being funded by the 2025 NASA Space Grant Consortium.
Variability of Luminous Blue Variable Stars
From September 2021 to November 2025, I worked under Dr. Noel Richardson, investigating the variability of luminous blue variable stars (LBVs). We used photometric data from TESS to look at a population of ~30 LBVs in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, plus a few Galactic LBVs. Using Period04, I computed Fourier transforms on the TESS data. With this, I ran an MCMC model to determine the characteristic frequencies and amplitudes of the stars.
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In the fall of 2023, we got an accepted proposal for time on CHIRON to collect spectroscopic data on our sample. This allowed us to measure the equivalent widths of the H-alpha lines for our stars. Our results were published in January of 2025 in The Astrophysical Journal, which you can find here.