Maya's Project Page

Who:  I grew up in Millcreek, Utah and attended Olympus High School. I came to the University of Utah for ACCESS, and opportunities like it, to get involved with research as early as possible. I love doing art, being outdoors, and listening to music.

My scientific interests:  I started learning about astrophysics and astronomy in elementary school via a presentation from ATK on their work with the James Webb Space Telescope. Since then, I have found physics and mathematics fascinating and exciting. I aim to specialize in instrumentation and astrophysics to help myself and others learn more about galactic events, motion, and composition.

Academic goals:  I am double majoring in Applied Mathematics (HBS) and Physics (HBS, with an emphasis in Astronomy and Astrophysics). I plan to attend graduate school where I will be able to attain a PhD in physics with a specialization in instrumentation, astronomy, or astrophysics.

Career goals:  In the future, I hope to work for a national laboratory or facility that will help me be a part of collaborative projects focused on telescopes or other extraterrestrial space craft designs. I plan to use my physics and data analysis skills to advance our understanding of the world and universes around us.

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe, containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies, which grow by merging with other galaxy clusters. Within a galaxy cluster, galaxies make up a small portion of the total mass. Hot gas—part of the intraclustar medium (ICM)—exists between the galaxies and emits light in the X-ray regime. NuSTAR is an X-ray satellite whose mission includes the study of this ICM. In this poster, we present the NuSTAR observation of Abell 2319, which is a massive galaxy cluster currently undergoing a merger event. The goal of this study is to understand the merger aftermath inside the ICM. Relativistic particles and magnetic fields in the ICM produce diffuse synchrotron radio halos. These particles also emit non-thermal X-rays due to Inverse Compton (IC) scattering. NuSTAR is the best telescope for analyzing IC emission, since it measures at higher X-ray energy wavelengths, where the non-thermal IC emission begins to dominate over the thermal emission produced by the hot gas. The magnetic field of a galaxy cluster can be constrained by combining data from the radio halo and IC emission. The magnetic field strength in clusters is very poorly understood, so constraints on the magnetic field are critical. Future steps include characterizing the background in the observation through spectro-imaging analysis. Spectra from different parts of the cluster will be extracted and used to directly compare theoretical models with the data. Fitting combinations of thermal and non-thermal models will help determine the best model that describes the emission, and a temperature map will be created and compared to existing observations from other X-ray telescopes. From either a detection of or upper limit for IC emission within Abell 2319, we will estimate the global magnetic field in the ICM of this galaxy cluster and compare it to previous measurements in this and other clusters.