SIRE was the pilot program for student run research seminars and took place May - August 2021. It was run by Ivan Altunin, Sophia Risin, and Amber Mistry.

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Below you will find a brief outline of the program.

Introduction to the Seminar: This pilot program will give participants from all backgrounds the opportunity to participate as a team member in a genuine published research opportunity using the technique of speckle interferometry. Emphasis items will include astrometry, short period binaries, and historical data.

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Goals:

• Produce a cohort of researchers familiar with the techniques of speckle interferometry.

• Published research papers written by participants doing the best possible science at this

level.

• Understand the capabilities of BARO (the telescope we shall be using).

Motivation: Although Red Dwarf (RD) stars—spectral types late K and M on the Main Sequence—are the most common stars in the Milky Way, they are intrinsically faint and more difficult to observe than earlier types, so their population, even within the solar neighborhood, has not been fully explored. The RECONS survey has completed the census of all stars within 10 parsecs of the Sun, and the campaign to discover all the stars within 25 parsecs is continuing. Recent advances in low cost, red-sensitive, high speed but low-read-noise, back-side illuminated CMOS cameras has enabled the study of brighter RD stars with small telescopes.

A campaign to observe the brightest nearby binary systems containing a Red Dwarf was initiated with the Orange County Astronomers 22-inch telescope in 2019 (Wasson et al. 2020, RDSN-1). This campaign was continued in 2020 utilizing the 11-inch telescope at the FIRO, the Fairborn Institute Robotic Observatory (Altunin et al. 2020, RDSN-II). Two further continuations were started in 2020 (RDSN-III and RDSN-IV) focusing on RD’s with shorter periods. Papers are currently being written.

The teams in this research experience shall continue this campaign and produce the RDSN-V and RDSN-VI Papers utilizing the 0.5m Boyce-Astro Robotic Observatory (BARO) telescope in Southern California. The produced papers shall include the following:

• New Speckle Observations of 10 Short-Period RD Double Stars - Astrometric and

Photometric

• Historical Observations from UKIRT and PANSTARS

• Discussion on the Binary Nature of these doubles

• Discussion on the capabilities of BARO

Schedule:

• Starting May 28th, Meetings shall be held Fridays from 6:00-7:00 pm PT

  • Recorded for those unable to make it

  • A combination of instruction, mentoring, and guest talks

  • Weekly Office Hours will be held by assistant mentors

  • Teams are strongly encouraged to meet independently outside of weekly meetings.

Course Platforms:

• Discord – Office hours, team meetings, discussion

• Zoom – Weekly group meetings

• FIRO Website – Student Portal with all course resources (www.FairbornInstitute.org) 

Course Staff:

• Ivan Altunin – Research Experience Director, Primary Mentor

  • Contact with any questions related to course materials.

    • ialtunin@berkeley.edu 

• Amber Mistry and Sophia Risin – Assistant Mentors

  • Contact with any technical questions. Will also hold weekly office hours.

    • Amber: amistry@oapb.org 

    • Sophia: sbrisin@ohs.stanford.edu 

We look forward to working with you! 

Please review Module -1 BEFORE May 28th to get everything set up.

References:

RDSN-I: Journal of Double Star Observations V5, No4 (jdso.org)

RDSN-II: Journal of Double Star Observations V5, No4 (jdso.org)

http://www.jdso.org/volume17/number2/Altunin_104_108.pdf