John Martin's Eta Carinae Research

This is a description of my research on Eta Carinae. To learn about Eta Carinae itself visit the site: http://etacar.umn.edu

Introduction

I am currently employed as a post-doctoral research associate working for the Hubble Space Eta Carinae Treasury Project under the direction of it's principle investigator (PI) Kris Davidson. In brief, the project is a coordinated effort to take multi-wavelength observations of the unique super-giant star Eta Carinae as it goes through it's 5.5 year spectroscopic cycle. The observing campaign includes an extensive campaign of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope STIS Spectrograph.

There are two sub-projects which I am currently involved with. This may change as my involvement with the team grows, so keep checking back to see what I am up to. Currently, my involvement is:

1. Writing software to improve the spacial resolution of the HST STIS.
2. Measuring changes in brightness of the inner part of the Eta Carinae Nebula

I am also responsible for some of the book-keeping and other sundry things to do with the Treasury Project database. Here are some related items without any other home:

• Revision history for the database
• A cross reference of StSci proposal ID numbers, dates of observation, and interval dataset record numbers.
• A list of spectra which have been overexposed.
• A table giving the row in each dataset which is the center of the slit
• Plots showing when STIS observations occurred relative to the Xray, optical, and infrared brightness variations.
• A map of the 4680 emission around the central star.
• Problems with the STIS CCD ERR Array

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