Graduate student s BADASS code has astronomical benefits
RIVERSIDE, Calif. An astro-statistics course University of California, Riverside, graduate student Remington O. Sexton took three years ago taught him techniques that led him to develop free, open-source code benefiting astronomers everywhere.
Called BADASS, which stands for Bayesian AGN Decomposition Analysis for SDSS Spectra, the code in its current form fits astronomical spectra of active galactic nuclei, or AGNs, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS, using advanced statistical methods. The code is unique in that it finally provides a way for astronomers to fit the stellar motions of stars simultaneously with many other components, is written in the popular programming language Python, and is versatile enough to fit not just AGNs, but normal galaxies as well, said Sexton, who earned his doctoral degree in physics and astronomy in September 2020.
December 12, 2020
Scientists in Germany have created a new family tree of our Milky Way galaxy, showing how it has grown over billions of years from chaotic mergers with smaller galaxies.
Galaxies, like people and civilizations, have histories. They evolve and change over billions of years. This is true also, of course, for our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers at Heidelberg University in Germany – led by Diederik Kruijssen – announced in late November 2020 that they’ve been able to piece together more of the history of our galaxy, to the point of constructing a
Milky Way family tree. This family tree traces back the formation process of our galaxy. It shows how our huge Milky Way – our vast island of 100 billion stars in space – started out at least four times smaller and then grew, as smaller galaxies merged with it.