For a bit over a week now, I've been working on a new project. I'm studying the spectral evolution of gamma-ray bursts, that is, how the energy of the detected photons change over time. If the photons from the source become more energetic, they become harder; if they become less energetic, they become softer. As usual, I will focus on the X-rays and gamma-rays detected by Swift.

To study this evolution, I am using a technique that is not widely considered within the GRB community. My adviser tried using this technique 15 years ago when studying bursts observed by BATSE, but nothing became of it. Over the next two months or so, I will resurrect the project to see if it shows any promise. I will submit my results at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) High-Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) meeting in Los Angeles, California in late March and early April. I submitted an abstract for my poster this past Friday, and I plan to register for the conference this week.

Within the past week, I successfully created a small IDL program to read in spectral data (the number of detected counts per energy channel), partition the data, run a simple calculation, and plot the results. I started with a bright GRB with good XRT (X-ray) and BAT (gamma-ray) data. The preliminary results look interesting. Next, I need to improve the display of the plot, calculate and plot errors, and make my program more efficient.

I've also been preparing my renewal application for my NASA fellowship. I need to submit a progress report, which means I need to summarize what I've done since August and communicate what I plan to do during the next academic year.

In other news, I received the results from the compressive exam, and I satisfied the requirements to obtain a master's degree! This May, I will receive a Master's of Science in Physics. How exciting!