Speaker: Kohl James (CSU Stanislaus)
Abstract: Powerful telescopes and various methods of measuring distance allow astronomers to discover billions of galaxies. The Hubble Telescope alone has revealed an estimated 100 billion galaxies over the years (Howell, 2018) As telescope technology improves, this number is expected to keep growing. The vast discovery of galaxies and their respective distances away from us is arguably a scientific accomplishment like no other. However, there is very little known about the distances between points within these galaxies. In our research, we attempt to gain more knowledge about these intragalactic distances. There are several types of galaxies, but we are interested in galaxies that are elliptically-shaped. We are also focused on galaxies that are brightest at their centers. For these reasons, we work with images of the galaxies IC2006, NGC3610, and IC1101. Furthermore, we use MATLAB to develop a code that locates the centers of each of our galaxies and can calculate the distance, in light years, between any point in a galaxy and its respective center.
