Each summer the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) of The Australian National University offers a number of Summer Research Scholarships. These scholarships give suitably qualified undergraduates the opportunity to spend 8 to 12 weeks at Mount Stromlo working on a research project under the supervision of an RSAA astronomer. The aim of the program is to provide a first-hand view of the work at a research observatory and hands-on access to state-of-the-art optical, infra-red, radio and computational facilities.

This summer there are 2 students from Australia and four from New Zealand in the scholarship program. One of the successful scholars is ASWA member Gemma Anderson. Gemma has completed her undergraduate courses for her physics degree at the University of Western Australia and is currently in Canberra participating in the summer scholarship program. Gemma’s research project is on Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) and assisting with investigation of the optical counterpart of Gamma Ray Bursts, ie the characteristics of the supa novae that appear connected with the GRBs. They are developing software to quickly identify GRB redshifts through photometric observations of the very young events.

Gemma is becoming acquainted with programming on the UNIX system and using the Image Reduction Analysis Facility software (IRAF, known locally as “It Really Ain’t Fun”). One of her tasks is to use IRAF to compare the noise and sensitivity of old and new CCD imagers used on the 2.5m telescope at Siding springs.
With the launch of the swift satellite telescope mission there should be plenty of data to analyse. During its 2-year mission, Swift is expected to observe more than 200 gamma-ray bursts - the most comprehensive study of GRB afterglows to date. The optimists were hoping to detect two bursts a week however three were detected in one day just after turning the telescope on.

Gemma’s supervisor is Prof Brian Schmidt, who led an international project called the High-Z SN Search. This project found the expansion of the universe was speeding up contrary to the common belief that it is slowing down. That research involved studying a class of exploding stars called Type1a supernovae.

On the 15th January Gemma had just come back from the Stromlo Summer Scholar (Team Triple S) road trip on Saturday including visits to Parks, Siding Spring, the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope and the Compact Array. A pretty awesome trip according to Gemma

On the 17th Gemma was back off to Siding Spring with her supervisor Prof Brian Schmidt to do proper observing on the University’s 40 inch for the next 5 nights. Gemma was very excited about this despite the prospect of the dusk to dawn shift while her supervisor catches his sleep.

We look forward to hearing more about Gemma’s launch into research astronomy and what might be the subject for her Honours degree. Good luck and well done Gemma.

Margaret Langley

From Gemma Anderson (written early July 2005)
I have started studying honours at Mt Stromlo Observatory through the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, ANU, working with Prof. Brian Schmidt on Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). My research involves working on the GRB supernova connection so basically research into whether the progenitor of a long-burst GRB is the collapse of a super massive star.

At the moment we are relying on the satellite, Swift, to detect these GRBs and send the coordinates down to Earth. It is our (Team GRB's) job, and various other groups around the world, to override different telescopes to try and detect the optical afterglow of these events. We have the ability to override the 2.3m and 40 inch telescopes at Siding Spring Observatory (SSO) based just out side Coonabarabran, the astronomy capital of Australia, in NSW. We also have the ability to override the Anglo-Australian Telescope which is a 3.9m also based at SSO and both of the 8m Gemini telescopes. When Swift detects a GRB we need to get online as quickly as possible and determine which telescopes and instruments are the most worthwhile to get onto the detection coordinates.

I also get to go observing on the 2.3m at SSO every month to observe supernova for another part of Brian's research. He uses Type Ia supernova to study the acceleration of the universe. This telescope has instruments that allow it to take images and spectra of celestial objects and I have just finished writing a manual for it called "The Half-Asleep Astronomers Guide to the 2.3m". During one of these observing sessions a GRB went off and I was able to image its optical counterpart. I then plotted its light curve and you can see that this object is clearly fading which means that it is the associated optical transient.

For my research so far I have been editing a program designed to take a supernova spectrum and redshift it. This means that the output supernova spectrum appears to be shifted to what it would look like at a redshift that a GRB may be detected. I am also about to start reducing and analysing images of a GRB afterglow which totals 56 Gigabytes of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Some of my other hobbies - a biggy would be astronomy! I love to go observing with my telescope on astrocamps and I particularly love star hopping for galaxies. I also really enjoy going to society meetings, club nights and lectures.

I also like sailing on the sail training ship Leeuwin 2. I crew on voyages as Watch Leader where I train 10 out of 40 trainees how to sail a tall ship and I also teach them leadership, teamwork, communication skills and environmental awareness. I also volunteer as crew on public, school and charter day sails. I also really enjoy ballroom dancing.

From Gemma Anderson (written early July 2006)
Im up at Narrabri at the moment observing on the Australian Telescope
Compact Array. I came up here to give a friend from Harvard, Ann, a hand
with her observing run. It is the most beautiful place and there is
something about controlling a fantastic instrument like the Compact Array!
There are kangaroos everywhere which is all part of the Australian Astronomy
experience and there are bikes provided by the observatory that we can ride
around the facility on. It really is exciting looking out of the control
room windows at the dishes. I have attached a picture of Ann and I observing
in the control room. I have some really great pictures of the array at
sunrise but the windows side of my laptop is refusing to connect to the
network so I cant send them. Tomorrow they are reconfiguring the baselines
of the array so it will be out of action for 2 days. Ann and I are going to
take the opportunity to take a ride on one of the antennae and ride around
the track of the old array that is still here.
Hope everyone is well,
Love Gemma

Date: 8 July 2006
Overview of PhD Project
Since starting a PhD at the University of Sydney, in March 2006, I have
begun a research project in high energy astrophysics supervised by Prof.
Bryan Gaensler. My research involves working on a survey called ChICAGO,
which stands for Chandra Imaging of Compact ASCA Galactic Objects.

ASCA (which is the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics) was an
x-ray satellite that surveyed 40 square degrees of the the Galactic plane
resulting in a catalogue of 163 sources. Unfortunately ASCA's poor spatial
resolution left two-thirds of the sources unidentified. This ASCA survey was
performed in a frequency range where we know little about the type of
sources that produce these x-ray energies. In recent work it has been
demonstrated that these sources could be a range of interesting, exotic
objects such as supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, pulsars, magnetars,
massive stars and high mass x-ray binaries. The ChICAGO survey will go back
and re-observe these unidentified ASCA Galactic sources using Chandra. With
the more accurate positioning provided by Chandra and through
multi-wavelength follow-up we will be able to determine the distributions,
birth-rates and evolution of Galactic x-ray sources.

Harvard Trip April 2006
On the 5th of April 2006 I visited Harvard for 2 weeks to meet Bryan, get
the run down and introduction on the ChICAGO survey and meet many of the
people that I will be collaborating with at both Harvard and MIT. This
enabled me to meet and talk to the four main scientists involved with
ChICAGO: Bryan Gaenlser, Pat Slane (Harvard), David Kaplan (MIT) and Michael
Muno (UCLA).

While I was there I was introduced to x-ray astronomy. I learned about the
different types of instruments and optics used in x-ray telescopes, x-ray
images and event files and how to extract spectra from x-ray data. Pat Slane
taught me how to extract x-ray spectra from ASCA data and how to fit the
spectrum using xspec. Bryan Gaensler taught me how to extract spectra from
both Chandra and XMM data and introduced me to many useful web tools such as SIMBAD, VizieR and HEASARC which I use for data collection, source
identification and catalogue correlation.

By chatting to many other scientists at the Center for Astrophysics who are
involved with ChICAGO I was told about some of the surveys that I would find
useful, not just in optical, infra-red and radio, but also x-ray surveys
such as the Chandra Multiwavelength Plane Survey (ChaMPlane). These people
are a well chosen group of collaborators with varying expertise in different
types of x-ray sources, population statistics and newly developed methods of
analysis. The trip to Harvard was a good jump start to my PhD project and a great introduction to x-ray astronomy. It was very useful, and a great
opportunity, to visit such a big astrophysics center and meet many of the
people that I am going to be working with over the next few years on the
CHICAGO survey.