Daily Science Dump: My Research Edition
Helllooooo my brilliant nerds. Last week when discussing binary stars I told you that I would give you an inside look of my research that was conducted last year. Well here it is! For your enjoyment, I have dug up all my old Python codes, compiled all 5,000+ lines of code, and went through all the datasets. Quite honestly it was like a walk down Memory Lane of utter misery. Just kidding. It wasn’t utter misery. I was miserable but I was happy about it cuz I was having so much fun.... Science is weird like that. Anyway, Here is the rundown of what was studied, how we studied, and what we said about it. And as a bonus I decided to add some pictures of the ‘during’ process of me and my research partner as well as some cool things we took pictures of and what we caught.
First let’s know the title because the title literally tells you everything you need to know to understand what we did: Wavelength Dependence on Amplitude of the Reflection Effect of HW Vir Binaries. Now as I mentioned in the Binary Edition of Daily Science Dump, HW Vir, otherwise known as eclipsing binaries of hot subdwarfs and a red or brown dwarf star, are binary star systems that were discovered by measuring magnitude fluctuation. That fluctuation is caused by the reflection effect.
We took data sets from 2 different star systems, one with the companion of a brown dwarf (J082053+000843) and one with the companion of a red dwarf (ASAS 102322+3737). Our hypothesis for the research was that the amplitudes of the reflection effect would be different compared to each other, mostly because of the atmospheric differences of the companion stars. Red dwarfs are held together by nuclear fusion while brown dwarfs are held together by a difference component of quantum mechanics. To do this research, we used the photometric procedure where we took a whole bunch of pictures for at least 2 orbital periods and collected to photon count from the CCD. From the data set of collected photons, we created Python code from scratch to create raw light curves which were then reduced down to the light curves we see here:
Once we had all of the light curves that we needed, we then applied this equation to the light curves so we could get values :
A is the semi-amplitude of the fundamental sine wave, B is the semi-amplitude of the first harmonic, p is the orbital period, t is the time, phi is the phase offset of the sine wave and lambda is the vertical offset of the sine wave. One that equation is applied to the light curve we get something looking a little like this
The values we get from that equation helps us reach our final conclusion and final set of numbers that turn out to be
Those final ratios at the bottom of each table are then put on a graph for comparison to see if we can make a definitive statement and have a conclusion for our hypothesis
As you can tell from the error bars of J0820, we cannot make a definitive statement of our hypothesis. The error bars are simply too big for an accurate answer. BUT, if we were to go off this dataset alone, we would be able to say that there is a difference in the amplitude, likely due to atmospheric physics difference. However, we cannot say that with confidence, so the research subject is still a mystery. BUT!! There is a way where we can get a better answer. If we were to replicate this research again, to get better results we would have to have higher powered telescopes that would be able to gather enough photons from J0820 for accurate data analysis. J0820 is a very faint system compared to ASAS, as you can tell from the small error bars of that one. If we were able to get stronger telescopes, we would for sure get better results.
So that in a nutshell is the research that I did regarding the binary systems that I talked about last week. Now for cool picture time! I want to start with my personal favorite:
While we were taking pictures of our target systems, the International Space Station decided to make an appearance! We had the worst luck with satellites because we would ALWAYS get a satellite in our pictures, but we never thought we would catch the ISS.
Well there you have it guys! An inside look at the Lewis-Corcoran Research Experiment! And yes... that is me in the picture with me and my research partner, Kyle. I kinda went through this really fast and to the point so at any part of this that you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask! I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about all of this. And I love talking with you guys about this stuff!
I hope you enjoyed today’s edition! I know it’s kind of about me but when I did the binary Edition last week I thought I’d tell you about this and use it as an example of how to detect binary systems through a light curve.
