Project Grant 2108616

This $294,055 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program (CFDA 47.049) aims to develop new tools for the Infrared Tip of the Red Giant Branch (IR-TRGB) distance measurement method. The key objectives are to: Complete the implementation of a fully robotic, dual-channel optical/infrared facility capable of monitoring bright stars in the infrared, and publish the design specifications and operational data. Use this new facility to...

This federal Project Grant award of $496,041, provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), supports a collaborative research effort between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California, Davis (UCD) to improve the precision and accuracy of determining the Hubble constant, a key parameter in cosmology. The research team will extend their previous work on...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program provides $346,927 to Florida State University (FSU) to enable Cepheids and RR Lyrae variable stars to serve as precision indicators of distance and metallicity for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time at the Vera Rubin Observatory (Rubin/LSST). The key objectives of this 3-year project are to: 1) Calibrate photometric metallicity relations to derive iron abundance...

This $525,731 National Science Foundation project grant will support the creation of precision models for a reference set of Mira variable stars. The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology will analyze archival data spanning several years from multiple space missions, along with recent observations, to provide fundamental parameters for each star. These parameters include variability periods, bolometric fluxes, radii, masses, luminosities, effective temperatures and distances. The work...

This $112,115 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports a collaborative research project between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). The goal is to provide a precise and accurate determination of the Hubble constant, which is a critical cosmological parameter, by leveraging stellar kinematics of...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program, with a total funding amount of $441,642, supports research to deepen the understanding of the final stages of stellar evolution, specifically focusing on red giants and their mass-shedding processes. The key objectives of this 2-year research project, which runs from September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2026, are to: Employ very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations,...

This $350,381 project grant from the National Science Foundation Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences' Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports collaborative research between the California Institute of Technology and other institutions to open the infrared sky to multi-messenger astrophysics. Key products and services include conducting time-domain surveys with the Wide-field Infrared Transient Explorer telescope at Palomar Observatory to search for...

This $200,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports research by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) to advance instrumentation and calibration capabilities for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the world's premier detector of gravitational waves. Specifically, the award funds research to increase the precision of the advanced LIGO detectors, including designing...

This federal Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program, supports a collaborative research effort to measure the motions of faint stars in the Milky Way galaxy using data from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NSF's 4-meter Blanco telescope. The $132,190 award to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania will enable the researchers to develop and apply new techniques to precisely measure the...

This $328,623 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.049) will fund a 4-year collaborative research program led by investigators at Louisiana State University, Harvard University, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and University of Maryland, College Park. The research aims to improve our understanding of explosive transients, such as gamma-ray bursts and...