August 24, 2011

This morning I made a couple changes to my presentation in preparation for presenting to the astro group.  After I presented, there were a couple more changes to make.  However, there was no time to edit before presenting to the intern group.  The intern group had a couple suggestions to make, many that were the same that the astro group made.  So I went and made those changes.  I hope that I don't come up with any more changes because Joe wants the final presentations before he leaves today.  The main thing to do now is to practice and make sure the presentation is long enough (leaving slides up longer).

August 23, 2011

This morning I worked a little on my presentation.  I also, unexpectedly, participated in an experiment at the color science lab.  I had to identify the important parts of 60 pictures.  Some had many important parts, others did not have many.  As a reward for participating, I got a brownie.  In the afternoon, I went to watch Halle and Matt practice their presentation and ended up also presenting mine.  I did not expect this, but it went well.  There are a couple changes that I had to make, but they are minor.

August 23, 2011

Today I finished my presentation and showed it to Joe.  He gave me a couple changes to make, just to finalize it.  So now all I have to do is practice and make minor changes.

August 19, 2011

This morning I worked more on my presentation.  At 1:00 I went to a meeting with the astro group.  Dr. O'Dea explained what causes the radio emission, which I will need to explain in my presentation.  After the meeting, Rupal helped me with information to put into the presentation as background information / introduction, which will be most of the presentation.  Marc helped me get access to the last set of radio images that I need, so I think that my project is finished. 

August 18, 2011

This morning I sent my images to Rupal so she could look at them.  I also continued working on my presentation, which is about half finished.  Rupal suggested that I should zoom in on the central galaxy to get more details, so I created more images. 

As a side note, I just realized that the posts already have the date without me putting it in the title.  Oh well... some days I post my previous day, so the title kind of makes sense.

August 17, 2011

I did not expect to have much work today, so I brought some things to keep me busy.  However, when I checked the folder for radio images, the clusters that did not have images now have images.  So I spent the day creating overlays and contours for those clusters.  I also worked more on the presentation, which I still need a title for.

August 16, 2011

Today was pretty much the same as yesterday.  I created contour overlays of some clusters and worked on my final presentation.

August 15, 2011

Today I worked more on my final presentation.  Bethany was showing a prospective student around the building, so she visited each of the labs and we talked about our experience this summer.  After that, everyone went to lunch at Crossroads.

August 11, 2011

Today I worked on extra research for my presentation.  The intern group went on a field trip to CVI Melles Griot, a custom optics manufacturing company.  They design and build optical trains to meet customer requirements.  This includes both the lenses and the barrel that holds the lenses.  The tour was interesting, but very short.  Apparently, the company has been downsized since the last time the group visited, five years ago.  The afternoon was pretty much the same as the time before the field trip, working on the presentation.  In general, the internship is starting to wind down.  The college interns have their last day on Friday, where they present their research findings.

August 10, 2011

Today I went easy on work as a sort of break.  I hope this helps me work more efficiently for the rest of the internship.  This morning was spent on outlining some ideas for my final presentation.  I got a fair bit done and feel that progress was made.  Lunch was a cookout for the undergraduate researchers (and anyone doing related work).  In the afternoon, I worked a little more on the outline, then read a book on effective presentations and took notes.  The computer lab is being converted into an optics lab, so I am not sure how much longer I will be able to work there.

August 9, 2011

Today I tried getting more details out of the overlays by playing with smoothing, the colorbar, and scale.  To make the presentation easier, I saved the finished images to my flash drive.  Not much else happened today, so this post is short.

August 8, 2011

Today seemed longer than usual.  I was working on my presentation all day, but did not seem to get much done.  I talked with Bob to get a more specific idea of what is supposed to go into the presentation.  Basically, it will be an overview of what I did this summer for the internship.  I am probably tired from the weekend still, so tomorrow will be more productive.

August 5, 2011

This morning I realized that I did not have contour overlays with the smoothed images, so I started creating them.  I did not have the contours easily accessible, so I have to recreate them from the start.  Not that the original contours would help, since they were taken form images that were not smoothed.

Just before we left for the field trip, I was introduced to professor Ninkov.  Because I am interested in astronomy, he offered the opportunity to visit a local professional observatory if he takes his graduate students before my internship ends.

For today's field trip, the group went to the Xerox facilities in Webster.  The first part of the trip was a visit to the research center where we learned about new projects that are being formed  These projects include personalized medical videos, open air lit cigarette detection, computerized breathing rate detection, and security printing methods.  The second part of the visit was the manufacturing area where the iGen 4 printer and copier is produced.  The amount of space needed to create this device is enormous and the tolerances are around half the width of a hair.  Overall, the tour was very informational and interesting.

We returned around four, so I continued working on the smoothed contours.  No problems so far.

August 3, 2011

Today was spent working on the overlays, as usual.  I am learning more about what the different wavelengths tell and how to interpret them.  Here is an overview of what each of the wavelengths I am working with tell about the galaxy cluster.  Optical images show mainly stars of all ages, far ultraviolet shows young hot stars, x-ray shows hot gases spread through the cluster, and radio shows where the gas is being heated.  The most time consuming part of the process is determining alignment of the images.  I had to align several times because I integrated all four of the wavelengths into one image using RGB layering and contours for the fourth data set.

The movie during lunch was a talk by the creator of Dyson.  He talked about the engineering and testing that goes into all of their products.  Also, he talked about inspirations and innovations that got him started in design and engineering.  This was the most interesting of the movies shown so far.

August 1, 2011

This is a bit earlier than I usually blog, but there is not anything for me to do right now.  This morning, we went to the MRI lab, which actually has nothing to do with the medical field.  The machine the interns use is called a NMR machine, which stands for nuclear magnetic resonance.  By using the NMR, the hydrogen concentration of an object can be determined.

When I got back to the lab, I created some RGB overlays of the clusters.  RGB overlays show more information than contours because each wavelength is still a complete image instead of generalized contours.  Lunch was interesting today.  Matt Greco and Jason made a frisbee out of two paper plates held together with duct tape.  They brought the "frisbee" outside and we threw it around.  surprisingly enough, it worked very well.

After lunch, Rupal stopped by to check my progress.  To smooth the images and remove noise, I need the new version of ds9.  We installed it, but it did not run at all.  Turns out, I am on one of the few computers in the building that will not run it.  The new ds9 will work only on Solaris 10 or higher, and I am running Solaris 9.  So I have to remote connect into a different computer until the one I am on is upgraded.  During the remainder of the afternoon, I worked on smoothing the x-ray images and creating RGB overlays.  I am glad with the progress I made today.