My host is traveling, so I started this week by switching houses. I am enjoying the slightly longer commute by bike, but I’m still getting used to the humidity. Three new interns have arrived and we have started playing soccer regularly during lunch. We also play cards and Pictionary in the lab, which is refreshing to return to after being out in the heat and humidity thanks to a very cool fan.
Grateful for this fan!
Lake Michigan at sunset
Max’s mom and sister visited and they invited me to dinner with them on Thursday. After eating, we walked to the beach just in time to see the last light of the day on the lake. I actually haven’t swum yet, but I am planning to next week.
Max and I have started reading papers and collecting parameters of x-ray binary systems. These include black hole mass, donor mass, inclination, luminosity, separation, and distance from Earth. More and more recent studies tend to confine the parameters to continually more accurate and constrained estimates. Eventually we will choose the best suited systems and project backwards in time to test the conditions necessary for black hole formation. I hope I’m here for long enough to get past the data collection.
Binary system diagram
Fortunately I’m not the only one who doesn’t like long-winded science papers. As a side task, we have started translating a paper on the analysis of LIGO data to an interactive format called Jupyter Notebook. It allows you to write text, insert pictures, and write blocks of code that can be edited and run individually.
Simulated spectrogram
We have been struggling to add simulated gravitational wave data to noise from LIGO that we will later use to plot a spectrogram. Spectrograms allow you to see the now classic “blip” of a black hole merger gravitational wave as it increases rapidly in frequency.
There are no comments published yet.