Student’s research examines radioactivity of the sky
St. Olaf College student Emily Witt ‘17 spent her summer researching the radioactivity of the sky with other undergraduates at the University of Chicago’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.
Witt was selected to participate in a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. The team used the South Pole Telescope — one of the premier telescopes in existence — to measure the radiation of the microwave sky, a study that has a strong community of researchers.
As a math and physics major at St. Olaf, Witt utilized her skills to help create a code that sets the groundwork for future researchers. This code plots the temperature of point sources in the sky and then determines which of these sources are significant by comparing the variation of their radiation to the background radiation present throughout the universe.
In the future, researchers will use this code to search for astronomical transients, a phenomena where radiation is emitted for only a few days or hours. The code may even be fine tuned so that it can find variations in any pixel.
While working on this project, Witt had the opportunity to use a database created by NASA to research the significant sources.
She was also fortunate enough to attend the South Pole Telescope team’s annual conference in which researchers presented what they were working on and discussed solutions to issues they were facing.
“Getting to see the enormous amount of work going on in this project and to know that I was a part of it, if only a small one temporarily, was extremely exciting,” says Witt.
St. Olaf Professor of Physics Amy Kolan spent a year on sabbatical creating programs for a course titled Programming for Discovery, which she taught the following summer at the University of Chicago. Kolan encouraged Witt to the apply for REU at the University of Chicago.
REU programs allow select undergraduates the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in their field through the funding of the National Science Foundation.
Though Witt is interested in astronomy, she knows that, given her majors, she could explore a number of fields. In the future she plans to seek opportunities to gain experience in geology and planetary science.