Research Initiation Award: Unraveling the Elemental Abundances and Dust Properties of the Interstellar Medium

Lincoln University, Lincoln University

Investigators

Abstract

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Lincoln University, Missouri, has potential broader impacts in a number of areas. The goal of this project is to study the relationship between dust properties and the interstellar environments. The project is a collaborative effort with faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia, involves undergraduate students in the research, and is developing three undergraduate astronomy courses. While it is well recognized that both the Galactic interstellar extinction curves and the gas-phase abundances of carbon, oxygen, and other metal elements exhibit considerable variations from one sightline to another, as yet, most of the dust extinction modeling efforts have been directed to the Galactic average extinction curve which is obtained by averaging over many clouds of different gas and dust properties. Therefore, any details concerning the relationship between the dust properties and the interstellar environments are lost. By utilizing the wealth of extinction and abundance data obtained by the International Ultraviolet Explorer, Hubble Space Telescope, and the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, this project explores the dust properties of over one hundred individual sight lines by simultaneously both fitting the observed extinction curve from the near-infrared to the far-ultraviolet and conforming to the observed abundance constraints. Thus insight into the physical nature of interstellar grains and how they are related to the physical and chemical conditions of their environments will be gained. The results of the research will greatly benefit the analysis and understanding of the previously acquired data from various space missions, as well as of future data obtained. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.