Physics and Astronomy Departmental News

Dr. Rapson first challenged SUNY Oneonta students with an eclipse glasses design competition. Victoria Hallenbeck, BFA ’24, won the competition with her eye-catching, vision-saving design.

During the week prior to April 8th, Physics & Astronomy students, their professors, and the Science Discovery Center brought a full slate of educational and entertaining activities to the campus and community, including Dr. Rapson’s interview with Hudson Mohawk Magazine, found at Eclipse and disco ball - Sanctuary For Independent Media (mediasanctuary.org). Ms. Rutenbeck and staff at the Science Discovery Center hosted special planetarium shows, a comedy show and a day full of unique eclipse-related events. Under the watchful eyes of Astronomy students Sam Sylvia, Ryheime Grant, Mike Gianetto, Jarett Deneau, and Skyler Reed, the Department’s telescopes were fully deployed.

This sampling of photos can vouch for the unique experiences that Dr. Rapson’s efforts and those of the Astronomy students brought to the entire campus.

For the full story and more images from the day, go to Solar Eclipse Captivates Campus, Guests | SUNY Oneonta.

The meeting gathered over 70 faculty and students from academic institutions across New York to discuss everything from star and planet formation to galaxy collisions to the latest James Webb Space Telescope discoveries. Physics student Jarrett Deneau presented his summer research on modeling gravitational lensing, Michael Giannetto shared his work on tracking the brightness of Supernova 2023ixf, and Josh Ippolito presented a poster on detecting exoplanet transits. Dr. Valerie Rapson also gave a short talk on the recent upgrades to the SUNY Oneonta 1m telescope and encouraged other universities to join a data gathering partnership to help get more students involved in research projects. After the meeting, participants had the opportunity to observe Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon through Siena’s 0.7-meter telescope.

Congratulations to Hadley Chan whose student profile was featured in a recent edition of The Oneonta Bulletin. Read about her experiences while attending SUNY Oneonta.

Congratulations to Jacob Ghiorse who has accepted a summer internship at Ioxus, a premiere ultra capacitor and module manufacturer located in Oneonta, NY.

Multiple congratulations to Nathaniel Schwed. Nathaniel was selected for the Physics & Astronomy Department's Academic Achievement Award, maintaining a minimum GPA of 3.5 in the major and possessing notable extramural accomplishments. Nathan has also been accepted to Binghamton University (Mechanical Engineering) and the University of Buffalo as part of the 3-2 Engineering Program. Finally, Nathaniel has accepted a summer internship at Amphenol Aerospace. Amphenol Aerospace designs and manufactures custom electrical connectors for military and aerospace applications.

Congratulations to Jacob Ghiorse ’24 and Andrew Lutz ’25 on being awarded Summer Research Fellowships by the SUNY Oneonta Student Grant Program for Research and Creative Activity. Through this program, which is funded by the SUNY Oneonta Foundation Inc. and the SUNY Oneonta Alumni Association through charitable gifts and grants, Jacob and Andrew received $3000 fellowships and $800 for research expenses. Through a three pronged approach under the supervisions of Dr. Hugh Gallagher, Jacob and Andrew observed and characterized the properties of seiche.

A seiche is effectively a standing wave that forms in the surface of water (or any liquid) in an enclosed (or partially enclosed) basin such as a lake. By way of illustration, consider the regular back and forth motion of water sloshing in a bathtub. The frequency of the seiche oscillations is primarily determined by the geometric characteristics of the enclosed basin. As seiche likely play an important role in the way that nutrients are distributed throughout a body of water, a detailed understanding of the relationship between the geometric parameters of the lake and the properties of the seiche are essential.

In the first component of this project, Jacob and Andrew developed a spectral analysis technique to determine the frequency of seiche forming in artificial basins, namely a rectangular Sterilite tub and a cylindrical above ground pool. The variation of the observed frequency with the wavelength of the seiche compared favorably to the relevant fluid theory. (The graph below shows the size of the wave as a function of frequency (horizontal axis) and time (vertical axis). In this plot, Jacob and Andrew detect two standing waves occurring simultaneously. One has a frequency of ~0.5 Hz. The smaller standing wave has a frequency of ~1 Hz. Due to friction, the size of both waves decreases with time.)

Next, Jacob applied the spectral analysis to an older set of observations of the currents under the frozen surface of Otsego Lake to determine if seiche were present. The results were inconclusive. In order to gain a better understanding of the shape and period of standing waves expected to be observed in Otsego lake, Andrew created a gridded map of the complex geometry of the lake and applied a theoretical finite-element analysis to determine shape of period of the permitted standing waves (Rueda, F. J. and S. G. Schladow, 2002, Surface seiches in lakes of complex geometry. Limnol. Oceanogr. 47(3): 906-910). The figure below shows the shape of the fundamental lengthwise seiche mode for Otsego Lake. The period of the fundamental mode is approximately 23 minutes. The colors represent the normalized (scaled from 0 to 1) magnitude of the seiche. Small amplitudes are observed near the center of the lake indicating the presence of a node. Antinodes, maximum amplitude oscillations, occur at opposite ends of the lake.

With the ultimate goal of making time series measurements of the surface height at specific locations in Otsego Lake to determine the characteristics of seiche that may occur, Jacob has designed and fabricated an instrument to measure and record the pressure in water. If the position of the sensor is fixed, variations in pressure are indicative of changes in the surface height that occur during the passage of a wave. The picture below shows the prototype of the instrument that he has developed. Following the design and construction of a water tight enclosure, the instrument will be tested in a variety of controlled environments.

When you think of astronomical discoveries you probably think of big telescopes high atop mountains taking data, or the beautiful images taken by the James Webb Space telescope. But even small backyard telescopes are capable of taking important data that teaches us more about our Universe, including searching for new planets around stars in the night sky. That’s exactly what SUNY Oneonta undergraduate students did this summer.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system. Over 5000 planets have been discovered by ground and space-based telescopes, and there are thousands more candidate exoplanet systems waiting to be confirmed. Astronomers can use many different methods to find or study an exoplanet, but the most common one is the transit method. In this scenario, an exoplanetary system is tipped edge on relative to Earth. From our perspective, the planet appears to cross in front of the star, making the star appear to dim for a short time once per orbit. We don’t actually see the planet move in front of the star, but we can detect the periodic dimming of the star and infer that an exoplanet is present.

Students Hadley Chan and Joshua Ippolito, working with Dr. Valerie Rapson, spent the summer observing exoplanet transits with the 14inch telescope at SUNY Oneonta’s College Camp Observatory. Their main goal was to test the equipment’s capabilities to see if they could detect known exoplanet transits, and also attempt to observe some exoplanet candidates identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The students successfully observed full or partial transits from three exoplanetary systems: KELT-23 Ab, HAT-P-32b, and WASP-10b. These three planets are all Jupiter-sized planets that orbit very close to their host star, and only take a few days to make one full revolution around the star. A light curve of KELT-23 Ab is below, which shows the relative brightness of the star KELT-23 A over time. You can see that the star drops about 2% in brightness for a period of roughly 2.5 hours while the planet moves in front of the star. The data was fit with exoplanet light curve modeling code called EXOTIC, which helps to measure the transit depth and central transit time. Overall, we were able to successfully detect and measure the properties of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a relatively bright sun-like star!

Along with these three confirmed exoplanets, the students are actively taking and analyzing data for a few TESS exoplanet candidates. These stars are often faint at visible wavelengths, and push the limits of our detection capabilities with the 14in telescope. But if we are able to detect these exoplanet transits, we can determine the planet properties and learn more about the formation and evolution of planetary systems. SUNY Oneonta also has a 1m JMI folded-Newtonian telescope (the largest telescope in NY state!) and we hope to start using that to observe exoplanet transits in the near future. That telescope has much greater light gathering power than the 14in telescope, so we will be able to observe fainter targets with ease.

Small telescope observations of exoplanet transits are incredibly important. They can help confirm candidate planets, detect new never before seen exoplanet transits, and monitor known exoplanet systems for any changes. This data is crucial in the era of the James Webb Space Telescope. Small telescope data can help professional astronomers know exactly when and where to look with space telescopes to learn more about an exoplanetary system.

The students will be submitting their data to the AAVSO’s exoplanet light curve database and to a project called Exoplanet Watch which aims to keep close track of exoplanet transit times for use by space telescopes. In the future, we hope to study more exoplanet candidates and help confirm or deny their existence. If you have a small telescope and CCD camera and are interested in taking your own exoplanet observations, check out the Exoplanet Watch website for more information.