Determining the Membership of Globular Cluster, M2 with APOGEE Data

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1 Determining the Membership of Globular Cluster, M2 with APOGEE Data VA-NC Alliance Summer Research Program The Leadership Alliance National Symposium July 29 th, 2017 BY: ZANIYAH DOCK

2 What s the point? We are trying to understand the building blocks of the Milky Way Galaxy. Star clusters are physically associated groups of stars, held together permanently or temporarily by their mutual gravitational attraction. They help us: Explore models of stellar evolution and the star formation process Measure the age and evolution of the Galaxy This project specializes in a specific type of star cluster, Globular Clusters.

3 What is a Globular Cluster? And why use them? Globular Clusters are a type of star cluster. Globular Clusters are made up of relatively old stars. Known Globular clusters in our galaxy are about 147. Located in a almost nearly spherical distribution, being the most visible part of the Galactic Halo. Their Importance: We expect that Globular Clusters are simple stellar systems, where stars are born from a birth cloud of a given metal content. Therefore we can analyze this metal content, as well as a different parameters in order to determine the membership a star should have if belonging to a particular cluster.

4 M2 National Optical Astronomy Observatory

5 How we re determining this membership. Parameters: Log g: Surface gravity can give us how big the star is [Fe/H]: iron to hydrogen ratio [Alpha/M]: ratio of helium captured elements to metallicity Radial Velocity: whether the star is moving toward or away from us

6 Results

7 Results

8 Results

9 Conclusions Application (Why use this project or experiment) : Tidal Disruption and being able to observe potential examples of a star cluster being pulled apart. This project can be isn t specific to one star system. Any star system can be used in this manner. The next step of this project would be to further analyze this cluster with more parameters, given that it is a good candidate of Tidal Disruption.

10 Acknowledgements Department of Astronomy at University of Virginia Mentors: Nitya Kallivayalil, Shane Davis and Paul Zivick ; Colleague: Temitope Olatinwo NSF:This work was supported by the NSF CAREER award SDSS: SDSS Acknowledgment: Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS- IV acknowledges support and resources from the Center for High- Performance Computing at the University of Utah. The SDSS web site is SDSS- IV is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS Collaboration including the Brazilian Participation Group, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Mellon University, the Chilean Participation Group, the French Participation Group, Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, The Johns Hopkins University, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) / University of Tokyo, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Max- Planck- Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg), Max- Planck- Institut fur Astrophysik (MPA Garching), Max- Planck- Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), National Astronomical Observatory of China, New Mexico State University, New York University, University of Notre Dame, Observatario Nacional / MCTI, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, United Kingdom Participation Group, Universidad Nacional Autonomade Mexico, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Oxford, University of Portsmouth, University of Utah, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University. Spelman College University of Virginia VA-NC Alliance Summer Research Program