Studying the demographics of giant exoplanets is important for understanding planet formation and evolution. While transit and radial velocity surveys have characterized giant planets at small orbital separations, the demographics of giant planets at wider separations (10-30 au) remain poorly understood. Direct imaging is uniquely sensitive to these planets but is most effective around nearby young stars, where planets are brightest shortly after formation. Many favorable nearby moving-group stars have been thoroughly observed, so increasing the target pool of young field stars is important for improving our understanding of wide-separation giant planets. The Fledglings Survey aims to identify young (<1 Gyr) nearby (<50 pc) stars for future direct imaging observations. In this project, we analyzed archival ESO/FEROS spectra of nearby young star candidates using lithium absorption measurements. Lithium is depleted in lower mass stars through convective mixing, causing the lithium absorption strength to decrease with stellar age. We measure the lithium absorption feature at 6707.8 angstroms using a MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) fit to determine lithium equivalent widths. These measurements are analyzed with BAFFLES (Bayesian Ages For Field LowEr-mass Stars) to create age probability distributions for individual stars. These age estimates identify genuinely young field stars, allowing the Fledglings Survey to expand the sample of nearby stars with reliable ages. Combined with spectroscopic follow-up efforts, this project contributes to a more complete census of the nearby young field star population, improving target selection for direct imaging surveys, and enabling more accurate demographic studies of wide-separation giant planets. 

This research project focuses on understanding how galaxies’ environments affect their morphological classification. In order to better understand galaxy formation patterns in the universe based on certain effects. In this study the galaxy cluster chosen was RMJ085411.2 100837.9 due to its richness. This cluster was analyzed in both qualitative and quantitative, through the use of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) the 25 galaxies were visually classified. The galaxies were also studied through a qualitative analysis through GALFIT in order to obtain an accurate analysis determining the specific structures. Including control parameters obtaining galaxy morphology and properties. With these results this project aims to address the consequences and effects a galaxy's environment has on their formation.

As matter falls closer toward the center of the accretion disk it loses gravitational potential energy and becomes radiation primarily in X-ray wavelengths. We use accretion disk models based on data collected from black hole X-ray systems such as GX 339-4 and LMC-X3. These simulations often show spectra that predict relativistically smeared absorption features that are not present in the observational data. Informed by recent local and global simulations, we conduct new disk structure and radiative transfer calculations with increased dissipation rates of gravitational potential energy into thermal energy in disk upper layers. We find a noticeable reduction of the absorption features compared to older models that did not incorporate simulation-based dissipation physics. This leads us to better approximations of accretion disk features, which, when incorporating relativistic transfer effects, will tell us what an observer from earth (or other extreme distances) should see.