From Chilly Climate to Warm Reception: Experiences and Good Practices for Supporting LGBTQ Students in STEM

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning students (LGBTQ) face unique challenges during their university or college careers, and while society has generally become more accepting of sexual and gender minorities (SGM) over the past decade, students still often face chilly or outright hostile campus climates, as well as institutional and departmental policies and practices that create barriers to their learning and feeling of belonging in their classrooms and on their campuses. Research suggests that these issues are particularly pervasive in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and there is some evidence to suggest that LGBTQ individuals are underrepresented in these fields, at least in the STEM federal agency workforce (Cech, 2015). In this work, I review the research pertaining to LGBTQ university and community college students in STEM fields, including departmental and campus climate, departmental and institutional policies, and student outcomes. I investigate the evidence for policy and intervention options, and synthesize the recommendations from the literature that can help to support SGM students in classrooms, departments, and institutions of higher education

MABEL at IPAC: managing address books and email lists at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, is NASA's multi-mission data center for infrared astrophysics. Some of IPAC's services include administering data analysis funding awards to the astronomical community, organizing conferences and workshops, and soliciting and selecting fellowship and observing proposals. As most of these services are repeated annually or biannually, it becomes necessary to maintain multiple lists of email contacts associated with each service. MABEL is a PHP/MySQL web database application designed to facilitate this process. It serves as an address book containing up-to-date contact information for thousands of recipients. Recipients may be assigned to any number of email lists categorized by IPAC project and team. Lists may be public (viewable by all project members) or private (viewable only by team members). MABEL can also be used to send HTML or plain-text emails to multiple lists at once and prevents duplicate emails to a single recipient. This work was performed at the California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Mid-Infrared Spectrum of the Short Orbital Period Polar EF Eridani from the Spitzer Space Telescope

We present the first mid-infrared (5.5-14.5 micron) spectrum of a highly magnetic cataclysmic variable, EF Eridani, obtained with the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The spectrum displays a relatively flat, featureless continuum. A spectral energy distribution model consisting of a 9500 K white dwarf, L5 secondary star, cyclotron emission corresponding to a B~13 MG white dwarf magnetic field, and an optically thin circumbinary dust disk is in reasonable agreement with the extant 2MASS, IRAC, and IRS observations of EF Eri. Cyclotron emission is ruled out as a dominant contributor to the infrared flux density at wavelengths >3 microns. The spectral energy distribution longward of ~5 microns is dominated by dust emission. Even longer wavelength observations would test the model's prediction of a continuing gradual decline in the circumbinary disk-dominated region of the spectral energy distribution.Comment: To be published in The Astrophysical Journa

The Spitzer Source List

The Spitzer Science Center will produce a source list (SL) of photometry for a large subset of imaging data in the Spitzer Heritage Archive (SHA). The list will enable a large range of science projects. The primary requirement on the SL is very high reliability, with areal coverage, completeness and limiting depth being secondary considerations. The SHA at the NASA Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) will serve the SL as an enhanced data product. The SL will include data from the four channels of IRAC (3–8 microns) and the 24 micron channel of MIPS. The Source List will include image products (mosaics) and photometric data for Spitzer observations of about 1500 square degrees and include around 30 million sources. We describe the plans and timeline for development of the Spitzer Source List. We demonstrate the verification of the Source List pipeline using Spitzer Legacy catalogs at "truth tables". Finally, we discuss the range of use cases which will be supported

First Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of Magnetic Cataclysmic Variables: Evidence for Excess Emission at 3--8 microns

We present the first observations of magnetic cataclysmic variables with the Spitzer Space Telescope. We used the Infrared Array Camera to obtain photometry of the polars EF Eri, GG Leo, V347 Pav, and RX J0154.0-5947 at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 $\mu$m. In all of our targets, we detect excess mid-infrared emission over that expected from the component stars alone. We explore the origin of this IR excess by examining bremsstrahlung, cyclotron emission, circumbinary dust, and L/T brown dwarf secondary stars. Bremsstrahlung and cyclotron emission appear unlikely to be significant contributors to the observed fluxes. At present, the most likely candidate for the excess emission is dust that is probably located in a circumbinary disk with an inner temperature near 800 K. However, a simple dust disk plus any reasonable low mass or brown dwarf-like secondary star is unable to fully explain the observed flux densities in the 3--8 $\mu$m region.Comment: Accepted to ApJ Letter

Precision near-infrared radial velocity instrumentation II: Non-Circular Core Fiber Scrambler

We have built and commissioned a prototype agitated non-circular core fiber scrambler for precision spectroscopic radial velocity measurements in the near-infrared H band. We have collected the first on-sky performance and modal noise tests of these novel fibers in the near-infrared at H and K bands using the CSHELL spectrograph at the NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility (IRTF). We discuss the design behind our novel reverse injection of a red laser for co-alignment of star-light with the fiber tip via a corner cube and visible camera. We summarize the practical details involved in the construction of the fiber scrambler, and the mechanical agitation of the fiber at the telescope. We present radial velocity measurements of a bright standard star taken with and without the fiber scrambler to quantify the relative improvement in the obtainable blaze function stability, the line spread function stability, and the resulting radial velocity precision. We assess the feasibility of applying this illumination stabilization technique to the next generation of near-infrared spectrographs such as iSHELL on IRTF and an upgraded NIRSPEC at Keck. Our results may also be applied in the visible for smaller core diameter fibers where fiber modal noise is a significant factor, such as behind an adaptive optics system or on a small < 1 meter class telescope such as is being pursued by the MINERVA and LCOGT collaborations.Comment: Proceedings of the SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference "Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VI" held in San Diego, CA, August 25-29, 201

Retrieval of Precise Radial Velocities from Near-Infrared High Resolution Spectra of Low Mass Stars

Given that low-mass stars have intrinsically low luminosities at optical wavelengths and a propensity for stellar activity, it is advantageous for radial velocity (RV) surveys of these objects to use near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. In this work we describe and test a novel RV extraction pipeline dedicated to retrieving RVs from low mass stars using NIR spectra taken by the CSHELL spectrograph at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, where a methane isotopologue gas cell is used for wavelength calibration. The pipeline minimizes the residuals between the observations and a spectral model composed of templates for the target star, the gas cell, and atmospheric telluric absorption; models of the line spread function, continuum curvature, and sinusoidal fringing; and a parameterization of the wavelength solution. The stellar template is derived iteratively from the science observations themselves without a need for separate observations dedicated to retrieving it. Despite limitations from CSHELL's narrow wavelength range and instrumental systematics, we are able to (1) obtain an RV precision of 35 m/s for the RV standard star GJ 15 A over a time baseline of 817 days, reaching the photon noise limit for our attained SNR, (2) achieve ~3 m/s RV precision for the M giant SV Peg over a baseline of several days and confirm its long-term RV trend due to stellar pulsations, as well as obtain nightly noise floors of ~2 - 6 m/s, and (3) show that our data are consistent with the known masses, periods, and orbital eccentricities of the two most massive planets orbiting GJ 876. Future applications of our pipeline to RV surveys using the next generation of NIR spectrographs, such as iSHELL, will enable the potential detection of Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes in the habitable zones of M dwarfs.Comment: 64 pages, 28 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in PAS

The detection of dust around NN Ser

Eclipse timing variations observed from the post common-envelope binary (PCEB) NN Ser offer strong evidence in favour of circumbinary planets existing around PCEBs. If real, these planets may be accompanied by a disc of dust. We here present the ALMA detection of flux at 1.3 mm from NN Ser, which is likely due to thermal emission from a dust disc of mass ∼ 0.8±0.2 M⊕. We performed simulations of the history of NN Ser to determine possible origins of this dust, and conclude that the most likely origin is, in fact, common-envelope material which was not expelled from the system and instead formed a circumbinary disc. These discs have been predicted by theory but previously remained undetected. While the presence of this dust does not prove the existence of planets around NN Ser, it adds credibility to the possibility of planets forming from common-envelope material in a ‘second-generation’ scenario

A Tale Of 160 Scientists, Three Applications, a Workshop, and a Cloud

The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) hosts the annual Sagan Workshops, thematic meetings aimed at introducing researchers to the latest tools and methodologies in exoplanet research. The theme of the Summer 2012 workshop, held from July 23 to July 27 at Caltech, was to explore the use of exoplanet light curves to study planetary system architectures and atmospheres. A major part of the workshop was to use hands-on sessions to instruct attendees in the use of three open source tools for the analysis of light curves, especially from the Kepler mission. Each hands-on session involved the 160 attendees using their laptops to follow step-by-step tutorials given by experts. One of the applications, PyKE, is a suite of Python tools designed to reduce and analyze Kepler light curves; these tools can be invoked from the Unix command line or a GUI in PyRAF. The Transit Analysis Package (TAP) uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to fit light curves under the Interactive Data Language (IDL) environment, and Transit Timing Variations (TTV) uses IDL tools and Java-based GUIs to confirm and detect exoplanets from timing variations in light curve fitting. Rather than attempt to run these diverse applications on the inevitable wide range of environments on attendees laptops, they were run instead on the Amazon Elastic Cloud 2 (EC2). The cloud offers features ideal for this type of short term need: computing and storage services are made available on demand for as long as needed, and a processing environment can be customized and replicated as needed. The cloud environment included an NFS file server virtual machine (VM), 20 client VMs for use by attendees, and a VM to enable ftp downloads of the attendees' results. The file server was configured with a 1 TB Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volume (network-attached storage mounted as a device) containing the application software and attendees home directories. The clients were configured to mount the applications and home directories from the server via NFS. All VMs were built with CentOS version 5.8. Attendees connected their laptops to one of the client VMs using the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol, which enabled them to interact with a remote desktop GUI during the hands-on sessions. We will describe the mechanisms for handling security, failovers, and licensing of commercial software. In particular, IDL licenses were managed through a server at Caltech, connected to the IDL instances running on Amazon EC2 via a Secure Shell (ssh) tunnel. The system operated flawlessly during the workshop