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Gordon MacAlpine
Here are two short-term projects which I would like to complete.
1. A collaboration with Charles Allen and a student, to employ a Laplacian of Gaussian operator for filtering digital images. Goals include searching for structural details in existing Space Telescope images of the Crab Nebula and also in digital mammograms.
2. Measurement of emission lines in existing long-slit spectra of the Crab Nebula. This involves learning to use the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) software developed at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories. Measurements would be plotted and analyzed in various ways with the goal of understanding the production and distribution of heavy elements in this famous supernova remnant.