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。研究者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，包括我们自己的星系，都会在恒星形成的过程中发生变化。研究者将让本科生和研究生参与这项研究，为他们未来在科学技术领域的职业生涯提供培训。某些类型的变星，如天琴座RR和造父变星，对于测量恒星形成区域的年龄特别有用。对于这些恒星来说，亮度会随着时间的推移而变化，这取决于它们的年龄和化学成分。这些恒星可以作为探测器来测量不同时间和不同条件下恒星形成的位置。这个项目将结合仙女座星系的三个最大的观测集来研究跨越年龄、亮度和变异性周期的变星。对这些变星的观测结果将用于追踪这个星系的恒星形成历史。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恒星形成历史。这位研究人员参与了对仙女座星系进行重复观测的项目，时间跨度从15分钟到11年不等。通过这些观测，他们将发现不同类型的变星，从昏暗的天琴座RR星到所有类型的明亮造父变星。年龄从1000万年到100亿年不等，这些不同类型的变量将追踪恒星形成的不同时间尺度，作为星系中位置的函数。恒星的化学成分也可以从变异性特征中推断出来，从而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.