ABSTRACT 1: The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment was originally built to observe the hydrogen gas existing in the Universe, in order to measure the baryon acoustic oscillations. However, due to the nature of the telescope, it is also particularly effective at detecting transient events, such as the relatively new phenomenon, fast radio bursts (FRBs). Fortuitously, it turns out that the very distant FRBs have characteristics similar to those of some nearby pulsars. The CHIME FRB backend is extremely good at detecting particular kinds of pulsars, which show strong one-off bursts, and thus we preferentially find rotating radio transients (RRATs) and also giant pulse emitters. I will present a machine-learning approach to find pulsars within the huge CHIME FRB archive and then describe our follow up procedure with the CHIME pulsar backend.
ABSTRACT 2: The discovery of thousands of planets outside of the Solar System over the past decade has revolutionized our understanding of planet diversity. Furthermore, by performing statistical analysis on the census of discovered planets, information about planet formation and evolution can be uncovered. In this talk, I share how my work makes contributions on both fronts. First, I present my own planet search of all ~200,000 stars observed by the original Kepler mission. In addition to the re-discovery of thousands of known planets, I found 17 new planet candidates, including a small candidate in the Habitable Zone - where liquid water could potentially exist on a rocky planet's surface. Then, I analyze my search results to calculate the abundance of different kinds of planets, and explore what this can tell us about current theories. I estimate that there are less than 0.2 potentially habitable planets per Sun-like star. Determining this is one of the major goals of astronomy, with implications
for the search for life and influence on the design of future exoplanet-finding missions.
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2020-03-30T15:00:002020-03-30T16:00:00(1) Finding new pulsars using CHIME FRB & (2) Searching the entirety of Kepler data: New exoplanetsEvent Information:
ABSTRACT 1: The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment was originally built to observe the hydrogen gas existing in the Universe, in order to measure the baryon acoustic oscillations. However, due to the nature of the telescope, it is also particularly effective at detecting transient events, such as the relatively new phenomenon, fast radio bursts (FRBs). Fortuitously, it turns out that the very distant FRBs have characteristics similar to those of some nearby pulsars. The CHIME FRB backend is extremely good at detecting particular kinds of pulsars, which show strong one-off bursts, and thus we preferentially find rotating radio transients (RRATs) and also giant pulse emitters. I will present a machine-learning approach to find pulsars within the huge CHIME FRB archive and then describe our follow up procedure with the CHIME pulsar backend.
ABSTRACT 2: The discovery of thousands of planets outside of the Solar System over the past decade has revolutionized our understanding of planet diversity. Furthermore, by performing statistical analysis on the census of discovered planets, information about planet formation and evolution can be uncovered. In this talk, I share how my work makes contributions on both fronts. First, I present my own planet search of all ~200,000 stars observed by the original Kepler mission. In addition to the re-discovery of thousands of known planets, I found 17 new planet candidates, including a small candidate in the Habitable Zone - where liquid water could potentially exist on a rocky planet's surface. Then, I analyze my search results to calculate the abundance of different kinds of planets, and explore what this can tell us about current theories. I estimate that there are less than 0.2 potentially habitable planets per Sun-like star. Determining this is one of the major goals of astronomy, with implications
for the search for life and influence on the design of future exoplanet-finding missions.Event Location:
Remote access (connect using Zoom)