Stephanie Striegel
Transient and Diffuse Gamma-Ray emissions
I spent the summer of 2017 as a SULI intern at Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). During this time I worked on two projects: (1) Under Dr. Maria Dainotti, I used Fermi GBM data of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) to explore a 3-dimensional relation between the rest-frame time at the end of a GRB's plateau, its corresponding x-ray luminosity, and the peak luminosity in the prompt emission. (2) Under Dr. Seth Digel, I helped set up templates to quantitatively assess different models for the diffuse gamma-ray emissions in the galaxy.
Spectro-photometric Stability of JWST's NIRCam
As an intern at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), I worked under Dr. Tom Greene, analyzing time series data from JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to assess its spectro-photometric stability.
Mitigating Stellar Noise to find Small Exoplanets
As an intern at the Carnegie Observatories, I worked with Dr. Johanna Teske, analyzing the ways in which different observing strategies may mitigate stellar noise signatures in precision radial velocity (RV) measurements. This work is inspired by Dumusque et al. 2011 which used astereoseismology measurements of 5 stars to find that 3 x 10 minute exposures per night separated by 2-3 hours each sufficiently averaged out jitter due to granulation and oscillations. We build off of this analysis by using data obtained via traditional planet-finding techniques as well as shorter binning times to probe noise in the regime of 10 minutes - 2 hours.
My final presentation at the Carnegie Observatories summer symposium.
Data Reduction and Detector Characterization
During the 2018-2019 school year, I once again interned at NASA ARC, where I continued to work with Dr. Tom Greene. I spent the year reducing data and performing detector characterization for IR instruments that were being developed for the Origins Space Telescope.
Ultra-Compact Dwarf Galaxies
Ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) are brighter and more compact than typical dwarf galaxies. They are hypothesized to be the tidally stripped nuclei of dwarf galaxies. However, there are very few confirmed UCDs. I worked with Dr. Aaron Romanowsky at my home university (SJSU) to expand the current catalogue of UCDs.