The Near-Infrared Imaging of the Andromeda Galaxy
MSc Thesis, 2010.
The ANDROIDS survey of M31’s disk with CFHT/WIRCam
Only 750 kilo-parsecs away, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is an excellent laboratory for studying the structure and composition of a major spiral galaxy. By looking at M31 in near-infrared wavelengths, we are sensitive to the oldest stars that give clues to a galaxy’s formation and mass distribution.
I am the Principal Investigator of a programme that observed M31 in the J and Ks bands with the WIRCam camera on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope. The first ANDROIDS publication will demonstrate our calibration of the near-infared sky background.
Research
ANDROIDS
is a panchromatic CFHT MegaCam and WIRCam survey of the disk of M31. This survey will bridge the HST/PHAT survey of one quadrant of M31 with the CFHT/PAndAS survey of M31’s halo. I am the Principle Investigator of this survey, and both my MSc and PhD theses dwell upon it in detail.
GHOSTS
is a Hubble Space Telescope survey of nearby galaxy halos, outer disks, substructure, thick disks and star clusters. It is led by Roelof de Jong (AIP Potsdam) and David Radburn-Smith (U Washington). I started working on this project as an undergraduate summer researcher at Space Telescope Science Institute, where I developed technologies for mapping substructures in stellar density fields.
At Rice, my B.Sc. thesis focussed on the kinematic and ionization structure of the Eskimo Nebula, NGC 2392. I used HST imagery, obtained KPNO echelle velocity maps, and ran CLOUDY photoionization simulations.
Code & Tools
ADS to BibDesk
is a tool for friction-less import of NASA/ADS or astro-ph articles into your BibDesk database on the mac.
Owl
is a Python module for building image processing pipelines. Owl leverages MongoDB as a persistence backend, making it practical for a small group to process a large volume of images. Development is private at the moment.
Bio.
Hi! I’m Jonathan Sick, and I’m a PhD student at Queen’s University. I got my Bachelor’s degree in 2008 at Rice University in Houston Texas, where I did a thesis with Prof Reginald Dufour. As an undergraduate, I was also a summer researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where I worked for Roelof de Jong.
Going further back, I represented my country twice at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, where my honours included an Intel Foundation grand award. At the Canada Wide Science Fair, I won the Top Junior and Top Intermediate-aged project in consecutive years.
Recent Publications & Talks
Dust in External Galaxies
Review paper for Extragalactic Astronomy, Queen’s University, 2010.
The GHOSTS Survey. I. Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys Data
Radburn-Smith et al (2011) ApJS.
Stellar Populations across the NGC 4244 Truncated Galactic Disk
De Jong et al (2007) ApJL.