Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Galactic Archaeology with Precision Asteroseismology

Christopher Lindsay is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the University of Florida. Lindsay will make precise measurements of stars that were accreted by the Milky Way to improve stellar ages. Amongst other stellar properties, these ages will help to inform how star-formation quenches in dwarf galaxies. The project will develop a series of workshops for undergraduate students that Lindsay will lead. The workshops will focus on developing the skills required for research and will emphasize Python coding and data-science skills. Asteroseismic modeling using non-radial stellar oscillations has not been done systematically for metal-poor stars in the Galaxy’s halo and thick disk. Lindsay will calculate individual mode frequencies from publicly available space-based photometry of a preselected sample of ~100 oscillating stars associated with dwarf galaxies that have been accreted by the Milky Way. These measurements will enable precise stellar age determinations through asteroseismic modeling. The ages will in turn be used to constrain timescales for merger events in the Milky Way’s history. Lindsay will make the asteroseismic parameters available to the wider stellar astrophysics community. As such, these mode-frequency measurements will form an important legacy dataset for future asteroseismic studies of metal-poor stars in the halo. 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. NSF Award ID: 2602148 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Christopher Lindsay | Institution: Lindsay, Christopher James, New Haven, CT | Award Amount: $330,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2602148 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2602148.html