Andromeda Variability Legacy Survey

研究人员将观察附近的仙女座星系。 他们将寻找明亮的区域，这表明恒星正在形成。 随着一代又一代恒星的诞生和死亡，它们改变了星系的化学成分。 气体和尘埃聚集在星系的旋臂中。 这些尘埃凝结成新的恒星和行星。 过了一段时间，恒星爆炸，将不同的元素送入恒星之间的空间。 研究人员将详细观察这个星系。 他们将绘制化学和能量分布图。他们将使用这张地图来测量新恒星的诞生如何改变星系的形状。所有的星系，包括我们的星系，都是通过星星的形成过程而改变的。 调查人员将让本科生和研究生参与这项研究，为他们未来的科学和技术职业提供培训。某些类型的变星，如天琴座RR和造父变星，对测量星星形成区的年龄特别有用。 对于这些恒星，亮度随着时间的推移而变化，这取决于年龄和化学成分。 这些恒星可以作为探测器，在不同的时间和不同的条件下测量星星形成的位置。 该项目将联合收割机结合仙女座星系最大的三组观测数据，研究跨越巨大年龄、亮度和变率周期的变星。 这些变星的观测结果将被用来追踪该星系中星星的形成历史。 他们对仙女座星系的研究结果将有助于了解我们银河系的星星形成历史。研究人员一直是对仙女座星系进行重复观测的项目的一部分，时间跨度从15分钟到长达11年。 通过这些观测，他们将发现不同类型的变星，从暗淡的天琴座RR到明亮的造父变星。 年龄从1000万年到100亿年不等，这些不同类别的变量将追踪不同的时间尺度，作为星系中位置的函数，用于星星的形成。 恒星的化学成分也可以从变化特征中推断出来，揭示恒星化学变化的位置。

The investigators will observe the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. They will look for bright regions, which indicate stars are forming. As generations of stars are born and die, they change the chemical composition of galaxies. Gas and dust collect in spiral arms of galaxies. This dust condenses into new stars and planets. After a time, the stars explode, sending different elements into the space between stars. The investigator will observe this galaxy in detail. They will map the chemistry and energy distributions. They will use this map to measure how the birth of new stars change the shape of the galaxy. All galaxies, including our own, change through the process of star formation. The investigator will involve undergraduate and graduates students in this research, training them for future careers in science and technology.Certain types of variable stars, RR Lyrae and Cepheids, are especially useful for measuring the age of star forming regions. For these stars, the brightness changes over time in a way that depends on the age and chemical compositions. These stars can then be used as probes to measure the locations of star formation at different times and in different conditions. This project will combine the three largest sets of observations of the Andromeda Galaxy to study variable stars spanning a huge range of ages, brightness, and variability periods. The observations of these variable stars will then be used to trace the star formation history in this galaxy. The results of their study of the Andromeda galaxy will aid in understanding the star formation history of our own Milky Way Galaxy.The investigator has been a part of project making repeated observations of the Andromeda Galaxy, covering time-scales from 15 minutes to as long as 11 years. With these observations, they will discover variable stars of different types, ranging from faint RR Lyrae to bright Cepheids of all types. With ages ranging from 10 million to 10 billion years, these different classes of variables will trace different time-scales for star formation as a function of position in the galaxy. The chemical composition of the stars can also be inferred from the variability signatures, revealing the location of changes of the stellar chemistry.