MSUM Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series: Student Summer Internship Presentations

Friday, Oct. 26 | 3-3:50 p.m. | Hagen Hall 325

Isobel Snellenberger and Adam Kline, Preparing to Observe TESS Exoplanet Candidates: The purpose of this project was to prepare the equipment at the Feder Observatory at the Minnesota State University Moorhead Regional Science Center to be able to observe exoplanet candidates identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). To calibrate our camera to be able to observe exoplanets, there are a few steps that were taken. We characterized the camera by flat fielding, measuring linearity and measuring gain and read noise. We observed a Kelt-16b exoplanet transit, which is similar to those in TESS mission is observing. We developed various Python programs which we used to analyze the images of Kelt-16b taken at the observatory.