Scialog: Time Domain Astrophysics aims to accelerate our understanding of stars and their life cycles, as well as to promote innovative projects based on new emerging datasets from Gaia and other space-based surveys that are likely to be disruptive for astrophysics.
In Year 4 of this initiative, RCSA and its funding partner, the Heising-Simons Foundation, provided a total of $880,000 in seed funding in 2019 for cutting-edge research proposed by participating teams.
Awards funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation:
Andrew Mann, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jackie Faherty, Department of Astrophysics, American Museum of Natural History; Siyi Xu, Gemini Observatory, HI — Dancing Degenerates: Ages of Brown Dwarfs from White Dwarfs
Gail Zasowski, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah; Joshua Pepper, Department of Physics, Lehigh University — Inferring Stellar Population Ages from Integrated Light Curves
James Davenport, Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology Institute, University of Washington; Timothy Brandt, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara — A Galactic Census of Eclipsing Binaries
Jennifer van Saders, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii; Keith Hawkins, Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin; Andrew Wetzel, Department of Physics, University of California, Davis — Aging Gracefully: Stellar Ages Across the HR Diagram and Their Implications for Galactic Archaeology
Total: $550,000
Awards funded by RCSA:
Robyn Sanderson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania; Sukanya Chakrabarti, School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology; Daniel Huber, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii — Beyond Gaia: Expanding the Dynamical Map of the Milky Way with Asteroseismic Distances
Simone Scaringi, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University; Yue Shen, Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Claude-André Faucher-Giguére, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University — Discovering Quiescent Supermassive Black Holes in NGC Galaxies with TESS
Total: $330,000