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Shashi Kanbur of SUNY Oswego’s
physics department will work with three scientists
in Brazil on observational astronomy projects
under a new three-year grant from the American
Astronomical Society. The pulsating Cepheid stars
in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the galaxy depicted
on his screen, will be one focus of their work. |
Shashi Kanbur, an assistant professor of physics at
SUNY Oswego, has received the 2006 Chretien International
Research Grant from the American Astronomical Society
to carry out collaborative research with colleagues
in Brazil.
"It’s an international competition judged by an
international group of astronomers, so I was pretty
happy to get it," Kanbur said. "Quite a few
(past recipients) are now well-known astronomers."
The grant program is designed to further international
collaborative projects in observational astronomy and
emphasizes long-term visits and the development of close
working relationships with astronomers in other countries,
according to the AAS Web site. Last year’s recipient
was from Uzbekistan and collaborated with a colleague
in Germany.
Kanbur’s grant is for three years of collaboration with
three astronomers at the Federal University of Santa
Catarina in Brazil: Antonio Kanaan, Raymundo Baptista
and Cid Fernandez.
Kanbur, whose wife is from Brazil, had visited the Federal
University of Santa Catarina before. "In July 2005,
I gave a seminar there, and we talked about possible
collaborative projects," he said.
The Chretien-funded project will involve observations
of stars in two galaxies, Cepheid variable stars in
the Large Magellanic Cloud and white dwarfs in the Milky
Way.
Cepheids, the subject of Kanbur’s ongoing research,
are pulsating stars that are used as distance calculators
in the universe. Gauging astronomical distances is key
to determining both the size and age of the universe.
Kanbur said he plans to visit Brazil for one month each
year, during the summer or winter break. The Federal
University of Santa Catarina is in Florianopolis on
the island of Santa Catarina — "one of the
most beautiful places on earth," Kanbur noted —
but part of the project will be to automate a telescope
at the Brazilian National Telescope facility inland
in Minas Gerais.
He will be able to fund some undergraduates from Santa
Catarina to participate in observations.
Back in Oswego, he said he expects to involve computer
science students in the software engineering needed
to automate the Brazilian telescope, and physics students
can work on analyzing the astrophysical data gathered
from infrared observations of Cepheid variables.
"It will help my teaching because I’ll be able
to use the data sets we develop in my courses,"
he said. |
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