I am a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Alabama in Huntsville working at the National Space Science and Technology Center. I research super-energetic cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). I joined this group in 2005 as a NASA Academy intern during the summer between my junior and senior years. Currently, I'm a doctoral student finishing up my second year of graduate school. I am supported by a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program fellowship and a Charles Curry Astrophysics fellowship.

To return to the Astromiror website, please choose any of the following links:

<Home><Blog><Grad Guide><Grad Students><Opportunities><Pro. Physicists><Ask a Student><About>

Saturday was the second annual Space Camp Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, and, for the second time, I volunteered to staff it. This year, the event was held at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Space Camp's home. At the rehearsal, I was given a blue Space Camp flightsuit to wear that night and helped with the table and centerpiece set-up.

That evening, I met the inductees at the VIP reception. It was important that I meet them, since I would be reprising my role as stage escort, collecting people from their tables and delivering them to the stage, with the additional role of returning them to their tables with their plaques and other gifts. I also met former astronaut Hoot Gibson, who was talking about preparing to be a contestant on the game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Batman also made a brief appearance; The Dark Knight is being shown at the IMAX theater at the museum, although I don't know why Batman decided to walk through the museum reception.

Finally, at around 7:30, the crowd made its way to the Davidson Center and the program began. The CEO of the Space and Rocket Center gave some introductory remarks, including a story about the Apollo 12 astronaut mobile quarantine facility that had also been used by the CDC for lassa fever quarantine, as a habitat for wildland firefighters, and as a home for graduate students studying catfish before being accidentally discovered in rural Alabama and transferred to the museum.

After dinner, I assumed my role next to the stage for the continuation of the formal program. This year, William Shatner's MCing role was taken by a local news anchorwoman.

The first speaker was famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. This man is not famous because of his scientific research. He's famous because he's charismatic, funny, a good writer, and one hell of a speaker. He has the ability to explain a complicated topic in simple terms in such a way that the listeners are able to view it in light they had never seen before, all while being entertaining and inspirational. He gave a fantastic off-the-cuff talk about his success in convincing the Good Morning America panel of travel experts to name the Space and Rocket Center's Saturn V rocket (the rocket hanging over our heads as we ate dinner) one of the Seven Wonders of America. At first, no one but him wanted it, but in the end, the decision was unanimous. After his talk, Huntsville's mayor gave him an award. I wish I could have chatted with him, but he arrived late and left early because of a family emergency.

The following talks were given by former astronauts Jim Halsell and Hoot Gibson. Their talks weren't as memorable as Dr. Tyson's, but they were very good and I liked them a lot. It seems the years if being an astronaut makes one an excellent public speaker.

Finally, the inductions began. The first was a German Werner von Braun team member who designed the original simulators for Space Camp. He was endearing. Next was a middle school teacher who has brought over 1500 students to Space Camp over 21 years. Then was a former Space Camp counselor who now works at KSC's Launch Control Center. Following her was a Space Camp alumnus in his sharp dress blues who flies F-15E Strike Eagles. Then was the only inductee I already knew, a Space Camp alumnus, a volunteer from last year's Hall of Fame event, the creator of a popular Space Camp website, and fellow Huntsville-resident space enthusiast. Finally, my favorite, a 20-year-old Space Camp alumnus who has been wounded twice while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He gave the kind of speech that, no matter where your politics on the war in Iraq lie, make you want to salute the American flag by the end. In addition to his Hall of Fame induction, a general ascended the stage and gave him a Purple Heart and another citation. It was tear-jerking. The event wrapped up at around 11:00.

Last week I created a poster for the MSFC Summer Intern Poster Day as part of my GSRP fellowship requirement. It turned out quite well, the best poster I've ever made. As a reader of my blog, you are the first of the public to view it.

The poster session will take place on Thursday, July 31, from 1:00 to 3:00 at MSFC's Activities Building (4316).

I've been quite busy this week. I didn't end up starting my poster, but I have obtained the exact requirements for it and begun brainstorming ideas. I hope to start the poster next week and write an abstract for the program.

I've spend a good bit of time this week planning my dissertation. I went through some short documents that I had previously written to determine which of them I can use to expand into or work into sections of my dissertation. I have starting points for several topics I hope to write this summer. I should be able to easily write about the history of GRBs, Swift and its instruments, the Swift data, and my analysis methodology.

I would also like to learn enough about GLAST, its instruments, and its data to be able to start writing those sections in the next few months. The daily morning meetings are helping me learn quite a bit about things I had never thought of before, such as trigger algorithms, coincidence detections, electron precipitation, the South Atlantic Anomaly, spacecraft movements, and occultations of Scorpius X-1 (a neutron star and brightest source of X-rays in our sky aside from the Sun).

I've also looked at three published GRB dissertations to study both the structure and the content. All three were quite different from each other. One was essentially a collection of published papers with very little relation between them. One was partially a collection of published papers and partially other related work. One contained chapters of closely related work which were not previously published. I was able to measure how much text they used to discuss introductory topics, instrumentation, methodology, models, physics, conclusions, etc. By studying what others have produced, especially those who have graduated from this group, I can better understand what is expected of me.

I made good progress this week continuing my Swift database. I'm pleased with how quickly and efficiently I can work with this familiar data. I hope that, with time, I can learn to work with GBM data just as well.

Of the 160 gigabytes of memory in my 10-month-old computer Stella, 125 gigs is dedicated to my home directory. Earlier this week, I found that I could not continue downloading new data because I had used 120 gigs of that space. I didn't expect to run out of room so quickly! It turned out that the unprocessed data I downloaded from the Swift archive accounted for 65% of that used space. Once I deleted those unnecessary files, I was able to continue working. I'm worried that I'll reach full capacity pretty quickly after I start working with data from two observatories at once. I may eventually have to inquire about purchasing a second hard drive.

I've also started to rewrite my color-color diagram program. My original program is a good foundation to start from. I was getting preliminary data from my original program before work on it ceased. I've written a paper outline of what I need the program to do and some of the code to do it. I haven't yet learned enough about arrays to really program it yet, but I hope by next week I will. My immediate task is to rework the input data files such that I can use an iterative process to read in the data. My biggest challenge is trying to think like a computer, which does not come easily to me.

I got back to work on Tuesday this week. It was difficult returning to "life as usual" after a long vacation! Luckily, this is a short work week.

Excitement is abound now that GLAST has launched. Activating, testing, and getting to know GBM is everyone's top priority. I've begun sitting in on the daily morning GBM switch-over meetings with the GBM team in Germany. During day hours in Huntsville, the team here run the instrument, and when it gets late here and morning arrives in Germany, the team there takes over. I don't understand most of what they discuss, but I will learn just be bing immersed.

The newest versions of HEAsoft and Swift XRT CALDB calibration files were released while I was gone, so I gathered up my courage and upgraded. I find Linux very user-unfriendly, and installations are never as straightforward as they should be. Surprisingly, I only ran into two problems this time.

I only upgraded CALDB at first because I didn't realize a new HEAsoft version had been released as well. I tried to run an XRT processing script called xrtfilter, but it decided it didn't like a column name in a calibration file. Version 4 of that file didn't contain that name, so version 4 worked just fine, but it did not like version 5. I emailed the help desk and was told to upgrade to the latest HEAsoft to solve the problem.

I followed the HEAsoft installation step-by-step, line-by-line. It installed without error, and it did fix the xrtfilter issue. However, a second problem came when I tried to plot an image in xselect using DS9. I double-checked my path and permissions, upgraded to the latest DS9 release, ran test scripts, and asked for advice from others with no success. Finally, I realized that when I typed the full path to the DS9 program within xselect, it worked. Outside xselect, I have an alias set in my bashrc file which allows me to simply type "ds9" in any directory and the computer will know where the program is. However, something must have changed within the new release of HEAsoft such that aliases aren't recognized. I modified the xselect program to include the full path to DS9, and it finally worked.

Next week's plan is to program and to begin working on my poster presentation for the MSFC GSRP at the end of the month.

GLAST successfully launched on Wednesday, June 11, at 11:05 AM CDT. Thanks to NASA's online broadcast, I was able to view the launch even though I couldn't be there in person. I'm very thankful that the rocket launched safely and the payload deployed without problem. Congratulations to the teams!

It will be about two months until GLAST is fully operational and sending us observational data. By the end of the summer session, I want to be ready to start analyzing the first GRBs.

I leave for a long vacation tomorrow. Before I go, I bring you, story time:

Chryssa and I were browsing the day's Astro-ph new submissions last Friday when we came across a paper describing a newly identified GRB from April 1998. Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory's (CGRO) Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), run out of Huntsville by my team, observed the gamma-ray sky from 1991 to 2000. Hmm, Chryssa wondered, I wonder what BATSE saw on that date in April 1998.

Files and files of BATSE data in paper format used to be stored in my workplace in a room called the Bat Cave. We started our search in the Bat Cave, browsing through large cabinets labeled DDS, the daily records of BATSE's detections. We quickly realized that DDS files for the dates of early 1994 to mid 1998 were not there. My task, should I accept, was to find the DDS files for April 29, 1998.

When the GBM Instrument Operations Center opened, many of the file cabinets were moved there. I scanned the cabinets in the back of the room, and to my delight, I found the right time frame. When I had finally grabbed the correct folder, I was not discouraged by the discovery that the papers were out-of-order. I flipped through them until I found the golden date. Success! I brought the papers to Chryssa 5 minutes before her scheduled teleconference.

But I was mistaken. I had found the files containing the daily calibration data for the instruments, but not the DDS papers. I rushed back to the GIOC to return the incorrect paperwork and continue my search. There were cabinets labeled for calibrations, bursts, pulsars, and “other,” but the only DDS files to be seen were from the early 1990s, long before my date of interest.

Frustrated, I returned to the Bat Cave. I scanned the cabinets once. Defeated, I recruited Rob to help in the hunt. We poured through every cabinet in the Bat Cave and GIOC. Rob soon began to worry that all the SGR files and all the later bursts (after 1997) were missing. He didn't know where they would be, but he did have an idea about the missing DDS files: deemed useless, they were tossed. We confirmed this with Jerry, and finally found the empty files in an unlabeled cabinet. The data from April 1998 is gone. All I got was a massive papercut. Oh well.

The whole launch schedule is in flux. On Monday they decided the launch would be no earlier than Saturday, June 7, but another Flight Readiness Review was to be held Tuesday evening. I was very hopeful. I waited for hours on Tuesday for good news, only to hear that the launch had been pushed to no earlier than Sunday, June 8, and that I would find out more the next day. There was supposedly another review this morning, but no official word was released. However, rumors are flying that the launch is now no earlier than Monday, June 9. A new issue was discovered today, a problem with a battery on the rocket, which takes a few days to fix.

Who knows if GLAST will launch next week, or even this month. Because of this uncertainty, and the fact that the supposed launch date is creeping towards my mid-June vacation, I have canceled my trip to Florida. I'm very disappointed. If the delay is substantial (months), I may still be able to go at a future date. If it launches next week, I'll watch it on TV. There's no point in getting too upset over something I can't control. I trust that the engineers and program managers working on the issues have the expertise to launch the rocket safely.

Meanwhile, I've been working days I didn't expect to be here. I'm still learning how to program, although I haven't made much progress this week. I'm still analyzing GRBs and organizing data. I started writing my dissertation. I only created a short outline, but it's a start. I think I will be able to write a few paragraphs by the end of this week. I'm starting early because I am firmly committed to graduating by May 2010. This has been my goal from the beginning of my grad program, and I'm even more convinced now than ever that I can achieve that goal.

The GLAST Burst Monitor team here in Huntsville is on our toes, waiting to hear the final word on the upcoming GLAST launch. The May 16 launch date was pushed to no earlier than May 31, which was set to June 3, and official invitations were sent. June 3 got delayed to June 5, and now, no earlier than June 6. I had planned to leave on Monday to drive down to Florida, but now the tentative plan is to leave on Tuesday. We'll know by Monday if the launch will happen at all this June. Everyone's fingers are crossed.

Meanwhile, I've been learning C++ and FORTRAN 90. I don't find it very exciting, but it is useful. Hopefully I'll be able to code my own simple programs correctly soon.

Currently, I'm catching up on the recently detected GRBs with Swift XRT data. I have been so busy over the past few months that I haven't gotten a chance to look at them all. I'm also in the process of organizing and standardizing my data. I've been analyzing GRBs for three years, and over those years, my methodology has changed and improved. I also lost data in last year's hard drive crash which I need to re-acquire. By the end of the summer, I want a complete, consistent catalog of Swift GRBs analyzed by me, hopefully complimented with GBM data when available.

I am also trying to learn how to program. I've been trying to learn how to program for at least four years, but it does not come easily to me at all. Teaching myself based on self-study and trial-and-error coding has been a failure. And so, I got a textbook that was recommended to me, and Chryssa and I are going through it chapter by chapter. I will also be sitting in on a few basic engineering programming classes this summer.

I also plan to begin writing my dissertation. I should be able to create rough drafts of the history and introduction to GRBs, an overview of the general theories, and the descriptions of my current projects thus far. Writing will not only help me focus on determining my next big project, but it will also help me prepare for my qualifying exam, when I present my research proposal to my doctoral committee and they test my knowledge in my research area.

I will also (hopefully) experience my first up-close rocket launch when the Delta II carries GLAST to low Earth orbit. Assuming the May 31 launch of Space Shuttle Discovery isn't delayed, GLAST will launch on June 3.

Today I received a master of science degree in physics! Two degrees down, one more to go.

Rumor has it that the new GLAST launch date may be set soon. I can't wait!