Project Title: Aperture Photometry and Distance Determination of Star-Forming Regions in the Milky Way

Presenter(s): Kevin Abbott, Yueshuwei Wu

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthew Povich, Breanna Binder

Presentation Type: Oral Presentation

Session Name: Astronomy, Physics, Planetary and Space Science, and Astrobiology (CAMPARE)

Keywords: The Milky Way Project, Aperture Photometry, Luminosity, Star-formation

Abstract: The Milky Way Project (MWP) is a citizen science initiative that first launched in December 2010 on the Zooniverse platform (www.zooniverse.org). Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope provide the data necessary to measure star formation in the Galaxy. In the recent MWP 2nd data release, 2600 infrared "bubble nebulae" have been found by volunteer citizen scientists. These bubbles are star-forming regions where dust is being evacuated and gas is ionized by intense stellar winds and radiation from massive, newborn stars. We report two results from our combined research. The first being the measured fluxes of each bubble obtained using a technique called aperture photometry, which measures the amount of detected light within a circular region around a central source of interest. In addition to the measured intensity of light, the distance to each bubble is also determined. Reliable distances can be obtained by associating the bubbles with the Red MSX Source catalog of young massive sources, as well as the WISE Catalog of Galactic HII Regions. Distances are critical measurements to convert apparent sizes to physical sizes and convert fluxes to luminosities (the intrinsic power output) for each bubble. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to study the full collection of 2600 bubbles contained within MWP and use the results to determine the luminosities and star formation rates of these regions.