Research Initiation Award: Unraveling the Elemental Abundances and Dust Properties of the Interstellar Medium

研究启动奖为历史上黑人学院和大学的初级和中级职业教师提供支持，他们正在建立新的研究项目或重新定向和重建现有的研究项目。预计该奖项将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善家庭机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。授予密苏里州林肯大学的奖项在许多领域都有潜在的更广泛的影响。该项目的目标是研究尘埃特性与星际环境之间的关系。 该项目是与密苏里-哥伦比亚大学的教师合作的成果，涉及研究的本科生，并正在开发三个本科天文学课程。虽然众所周知，银河系星际消光曲线和碳，氧和其他金属元素的气相丰度在不同的视线之间表现出相当大的变化，但到目前为止，大多数尘埃消光模型的研究都是针对银河系的平均消光曲线，这是通过对许多不同气体和尘埃性质的云进行平均而得到的。因此，关于尘埃性质和星际环境之间关系的任何细节都丢失了。通过利用国际紫外线探测器、哈勃太空望远镜和远紫外线光谱探测器获得的大量消光和丰度数据，该项目通过同时拟合从近红外到远紫外的观测消光曲线和符合观测丰度约束，探索了100多条单独视线的尘埃特性。因此，将获得对星际颗粒的物理性质以及它们如何与其环境的物理和化学条件相关的洞察力。研究结果将极大地有利于分析和理解以前从各种空间任务获得的数据，以及未来获得的数据。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Lincoln University, Missouri, has potential broader impacts in a number of areas. The goal of this project is to study the relationship between dust properties and the interstellar environments. The project is a collaborative effort with faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia, involves undergraduate students in the research, and is developing three undergraduate astronomy courses.While it is well recognized that both the Galactic interstellar extinction curves and the gas-phase abundances of carbon, oxygen, and other metal elements exhibit considerable variations from one sightline to another, as yet, most of the dust extinction modeling efforts have been directed to the Galactic average extinction curve which is obtained by averaging over many clouds of different gas and dust properties. Therefore, any details concerning the relationship between the dust properties and the interstellar environments are lost. By utilizing the wealth of extinction and abundance data obtained by the International Ultraviolet Explorer, Hubble Space Telescope, and the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, this project explores the dust properties of over one hundred individual sight lines by simultaneously both fitting the observed extinction curve from the near-infrared to the far-ultraviolet and conforming to the observed abundance constraints. Thus insight into the physical nature of interstellar grains and how they are related to the physical and chemical conditions of their environments will be gained. The results of the research will greatly benefit the analysis and understanding of the previously acquired data from various space missions, as well as of future data obtained.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.