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M. N. Beasley (University of Colorado at Boulder)
For my thesis, I designed and built a high resolution imaging spectrograph, the Imaging Spectrograph for Interstellar Shocks (ISIS), that flew on a sub-orbital rocket from White Sands Missile Range on November 18th, 2002. This rocket-borne instrument was designed to image hot plasma at O~{\sc vi} \lambda\lambda 1032/1038 Å\space behind a shock front in the Cygnus Loop. The new type of instrument developed for this application is a novel type of spectrograph that relies on a standard telescope for its optical layout. This layout, in conjunction with aberration-corrected holography, is capable of arcsecond quality imaging in diffracted light while maintaining arcsecond imaging at the telescope focus.
The follow-up research is based on observations of N132D, a young, oxygen rich supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. These new spectroscopic observations from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer of emitting O~{\sc vi} in the shocked stellar ejecta were used to distinguish between different models of the ejecta and demonstrate that there is lack of appropriate observations of this type of remnant.
This work was supported by NASA grants NAG5-5096, NAG5-7465, NAG5-8955, and NAG5-10319. M. Beasley was supported by a Graduate Student Research Program fellowship NGT5-50340.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.