{"id":105481,"date":"2019-11-05T14:26:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T00:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=105481"},"modified":"2024-03-15T15:27:32","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T01:27:32","slug":"payne-nasa-fellowship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2019\/11\/05\/payne-nasa-fellowship\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomy graduate student awarded three-year <abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Administration\">NASA<\/abbr> fellowship"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_105852\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105852\" style=\"width: 676px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Anna_Payne_IfA.jpg\" alt=\"Anna Payne\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105852\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Anna_Payne_IfA.jpg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Anna_Payne_IfA-130x73.jpg 130w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Anna_Payne_IfA-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-105852\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anna Payne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>  at M\u0101noa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (<abbr>IfA<\/abbr>) graduate student received a three-year <abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Administration\">NASA<\/abbr> fellowship that sponsors rising <abbr title=\"science, technology, engineering and mathematics\">STEM<\/abbr> scientists who will support future <abbr>NASA<\/abbr> discoveries. She is the first <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> student to receive this award, worth $55,000 a year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anna Payne<\/strong> will continue her research with <strong>Benjamin Shappee<\/strong>, <abbr>IfA<\/abbr> assistant professor, on the variability of active galactic nuclei (<abbr title=\"active galactic nuclei\">AGN<\/abbr>), the extremely luminous cores of galaxies, where material falling into the central supermassive black hole is heated and glows brightly. The galaxies are so bright that they can be seen in the far reaches of the universe. These highly energetic systems still remain a mystery despite decades of study.<\/p>\n<p>The exact physical mechanism that causes <abbr>AGN<\/abbr> brightness to vary on timescales of days to years is not fully understood. Payne\u2019s research will investigate the phenomenon by combining data from several <abbr>NASA<\/abbr> space telescopes, including the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, in concert with the ground-based All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. These observatories take data covering a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from x-ray through human-eye-visible wavelengths.<\/p>\n<p>Using these different astronomical observatories, Payne will search for <abbr>AGN<\/abbr> that brighten in real time, and then analyze data taken over several months following the outburst. Quantifying how these different wavelengths of light are correlated during flare events will help provide clues to understanding why <abbr>AGN<\/abbr> change their brightness over time. Payne hopes to distinguish between different models that have been previously proposed to explain why <abbr>AGN<\/abbr> are variable over all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.<\/p>\n<p>As part of her <abbr title=\"doctor of philosophy\">PhD<\/abbr> dissertation, Payne will travel each summer to <abbr>NASA<\/abbr>\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to work with researchers there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anna Payne is the first <abbr>UH<\/abbr> student to receive this award, worth $55,000 a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[34,35,313,660,9,1626],"class_list":["post-105481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-stem","tag-student-recognition","tag-uh-manoa","tag-women-of-uh","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105481"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105857,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105481\/revisions\/105857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}