Nearing the End and Finding the Results

After weeks of work on this project and learning about and how to do things I didn't even know existed prior to this project, I am nearing the end of the project as well as the final results. In a previous blog post, I had said that Dr. Ertel and I had already come upon the final result of the project. However, this is not entirely true. In the beginning, Dr. Ertel had hoped that I would be able to get a handle on the main ideas of the project and that I would set up the infrastructure for the project such as the supplementary codes and the preparation of the data. I am very happy to say that we have advanced simply beyond the set up phase of the project. I am currently now running the programs that will give us the final results to this project. I hope to have the final results by next week, which should give me much more material to present in my final presentation.

On another note, I would like to do two things. The first is apologize to any readers if my blog comes off as arrogant. My intention is not to make anyone who does not understand feel dumb. I recognize that some of my explanations may have been a bit short or unclear, and I just want to assure people that I am trying to remedy this issue and make things more clear from now on, even if this requires more time explaining. The second thing I would like to do is to thank anyone who has either looked at my blog a few times or has followed my blog and read it often. Thank you for taking an interest in my project, I greatly appreciate it, and I hope that you may continue to read this blog and learn more about this project.

I would like to talk about something a little different today concerning my project rather than just simply what I am doing, and that is how I feel about astronomy as I find my self coming to the end of this project. Prior to taking this on, I had no real experience with astronomy. The most I knew about it was that the night sky in Tucson is pretty and fun to look at, so its safe to say that I had no idea the types of things I would be doing in this project before-hand. My first day meeting with Dr. Ertel, he attempted to teach me months worth of information in order to get me to a place where I could begin this project, and needless to say, it all went straight over my head. In the beginning, I was helpless and was enjoying my project less and less because I had no idea what was going on day to day, and I struggled to find the drive for this project. this stage ended when I found my first breakthrough, my first code. This code, while the simplest that I would end up creating, was the most difficult because my level of knowledge was so far below where it needed to be in order to complete the task. After completing this task, I began to get the hang of things. I could effectively write and execute a code as well as interpret astronomical data. This came as a shock to me a few weeks in because I reflected on how little that I knew before and how far I had come since the beginning.

Now, I enjoy coming to work on my project because of the feeling of achievement that I get when I complete one of the tasks that I couldn't have dreamed of doing even a few days ago. I can see my learning and improvement, and it is satisfying to know that, after this project, I will have actually learned something powerful and meaningful.

While the codes continue to calculate the final results, I would like to explain why we are studying this particular star.

The Helix nebula is the closest solar nebula to earth, which means that it is the most observable. A solar nebula occurs when a star is finishing it main sequence. That is the phase of the star that our star is currently. The main sequence represents the recognizable phase of the star because a main sequence star typically burns yellow like our sun. Stars expand over time as their core fuel is used up and converted to heavier materials that expand the star's outer shell. Eventually, the star expands to the point where the outer shell can no longer be held. The outer core is lost from the star and forms what can be seen as the beautiful cloud of the helix nebula.

The central star, since it has burned up all of it's fuel and has lost its shell mass, is now a whit dwarf star. White dwarf stars are very dense having about the mass of our sun in the size of our earth. This means that debris in space is pulled very close to the star because the mass is so high with such a low radius. Now, white dwarf stars are extremely hot as they are the exposed remnants of the core of the sun. They burn in the thousands of Kelvin. This means that they are very massive (mass wise) and very hot for their small size. Because of this, the debris and dust surrounding the star is visible. The high temperatures heat the dust making them observable while the large mass holds the debris in close enough to the star to be observed. This is why the central star of the helix nebula is studied for it's debris disk, because it is much more observable than debris disks around main sequence stars.

Knowing about the debris disk around this star can help astronomers understand why certain white dwarf stars have planets around them. The dust is an indication of planets. The reason that astronomers look for dust rather than planets is because dust is much more easily observed. This is due to the ratio between surface area and mass. The dust surrounding the star has a very large surface area as it encompasses much of the space around the star. However, a planet has a very low surface are to mass ratio as the mass is condensed into a smaller surface area. Therefore, knowing about the existence of dust is an indicator for the existence of larger planetary bodies.

You might be wondering, "What is so special about planets around white dwarf stars, who cares?" In order for a white dwarf star to occur, a main sequence star, a basic star, must expand into a red giant star. These stars are massive and they engulf the planets and material that is too close to the star. Because of this, planets that would exist around the star would be engulfed by the star or destroyed when the star turns into a nebula. Therefore, it is interesting that there exist planets around white dwarf stars as the planetary systems surrounding white dwarf stars would have been destroyed while the white dwarf star was created. This is why we are studying this star. We know of the existence of the dust disk, and we want to use the information we gather from studying this star to understand the existence of planets around white dwarf stars.

I hope my explanation was understandable, especially because the reasoning behind this project is quite interesting and extends far beyond just me and this one project.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I should have the final results soon, and I will explain what they all mean. I would love to answer any questions in the comments, and I would also like your feedback on this post as to whether I have changed my blogging style and if it is better or not.

Until the next one!