jsmonzon

J. Sebastian Monzon

ABOUT ME: I am a 3rd year PhD student with the Yale Astronomy department. I work with prof. Frank van den Bosch on the connection between galaxies and their dark matter halos. I am particularly interested in the low-mass/faint systems and how they can be used to constrain cosmology. I am passionate about equity and diversity in the field of astronomy and am an active member of several graduate student organizations. Outside of academia, I enjoy playing soccer, disc golf and video games. I am a california native and the youngest of three brothers.

The Stellar-Halo Mass Relation (SHMR) for halos less massive than the MW

The Stellar-Halo Mass Relation - a fundamental derivative of the galaxy-halo connection, has been investigated using a variety of different modeling techniques. From hydrodynamical simulations to ambundace matching techniques, there is an excellent correspondance between models over 5 orders of magnitude in halo mass. Until recently, there has simply been no statistically significant redshift surveys like SDSS for faint galaxies in the "classical dwarf" regime. This leaves the SHMR not well constrained for halo masses less massive than that of the MW. Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) is an imporant first step in having statistically robust galaxy samples at this low mass end. My work focuses on what we can learn about the SHMR using these new observations. Specificaly we are developing a semi-anayltic forward model to learn about how natural variance in the accretion histories of halos impact our ability to learn about the SHMR.

Metalicity measurements from calcium lines

Our MilkyWay (MW) hosts a population of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters which, due to their proximity, can be resolved into individual stars. These satellites are prime targets for investigations into galaxy formation, dark matter and cosmology but are often contaminated by foreground MW stars. Accurate measurements of metallicity (or [Fe/H]) can be powerful membership distinguishers. We are using Keck/DEIMOS spectra to extend the empirical relationship between [Fe/H] and the Ca II triplet to lower magnitude stars.

Abundaces in the Orion molecular cloud with SOFIA/EXES

The Becklin–Neugebauer/Kleinmann–Low (BN/KL) region in the center of the Orion molecular cloud is the best studied region associated with massive star formation at only ~400 pc away. The region is complex, hosting several distinct cloud components that trace different physical states of the nebula. We used high resolution (R~60,000) spectra from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to make spatially-constrained abundace measurments on water and silicon emission lines.

effective opacity of the intergalacitc medium

The Intergalactic Medium (IGM) is a diffuse gas, mainly consisting of ionized hydrogen and helium, that permeates the space between galaxies in the large-scale cosmic web. We measured the effective opacity of the IGM (τ_eff) as a function of redshift, using the spectra of distant star forming galaxies from the COSMOS Lyman-Alpha Mapping And Tomographic Observations (CLAMATO) survey.

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