Title: Final Project - Part 1
Course: ASTRON103: The Evolving Universe: Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology (001) DHH SU18 > Section: Week 5

Hunt for a New Home

The time has come for us to begin making the steps to leave our beloved Earth. We must find a new planet around another star that can host a new colony of humans and life!

For this project, you will go through the steps of planning for a new exoplanet colony, starting from identifying an ideal stellar type, analyzing their light curves for transiting planets, determining properties of these planets to find a suitable Earth-like counterpart, and planning a journey of first explorers.

This project is slightly different from your previous two in that each week, you will have to complete and submit one new element. In total there will be 4 parts to this project spread out over 4 weeks.

Part 1:

This part of the project is due at the end of Week 5 on Sunday, July 22nd at 11:59PM.

This week, you will be given spectra for several nearby stars! You will need to determine what kinds of stars these are and decide which may be the best stars to potentially host a habitable planet.

Tasks

1. Download the Stellar Spectral Data either as a compressed file (here) or view them online via canvas (here)
2. Look over the library of spectra so you know what you can start to expect for each type of star. The library is here to guide you in reviewing the target spectra for the next step. The library lists the type, class, and effective temperature associated with that spectrum. The library can be found in the directory called "astro103-library-spectra" (here on canvas).
3. Analyze all 20 of the stellar spectra provided in the target directory called "astro103-target-spectra" (here on canvas) and for each star: (10 pts.)
  1. determine their stellar type (OBAFGKM and 1-10, ex. The Sun is a G2 star.)
  2. determine their luminosity class (I, III, V)
  3. estimate their effective temperature (in Kelvin)
4. Determine which of these stars would be an ideal type to host a habitable planet for humans to survive on. (Consider your writing assignment for this week!)
5. Select a set of stars from the full sample that you would like to get follow up light curve data for. The light curves will be provided next week and will allow you to search for exoplanets. (5 pts.)
6. Record your catalog of derived parameters and request for follow up light curves here for submission. You can modify your responses on this form as many times as you'd like until the deadline.