2023 Departmental Poster Competition

In the universe, celestial bodies tend to become gravitationally bound to one another. Examples of this are seen in subjects such as galaxies, planetary systems, and globular clusters. Globular clusters (GC) are dense, spherical accumulations of stellar populations. It has been observed that these systems occupy the halo of the Milky Way, which is the oldest section of our Galaxy. Because GC are comprised of old stars, they have a low abundance of heavy elements. Due to the stars within a GC forming within a similar point in time, these systems serve as cosmic clocks. The most massive star left on the Main Sequence provides the cluster's age through a process called isochrone fitting. The isochrone is a curve on the color-magnitude diagram (CMD), a scatter plot depicting the relationship between absolute magnitude, and collectively color and temperature, that represents a population of stars of the same age but with different masses. We have selected several GC to observe from Texas Tech’s Preston Gott Skyview Observatory, utilizing complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) detectors on 12-inch telescopes and 3 photometric broadband SLOAN/SDSS filters. Two of the CMOS cameras were purchased using funds from the 2021 Texas Tech Alumni Association Excellence Award. By directly comparing the CMDs of the different clusters and later each of them with CMDs found in the literature, we can (a) identify different CMD features based on the different stellar populations and their evolutionary stage each cluster hosts; (b) address the reliability of our Observatory equipment for research investigations. We conclude that the equipment is reliable for both undergraduate labs and research projects, thus offering for the first time the opportunity to undergraduate students to obtain, analyze, and publish their own data obtained from the TTU Skyview Observatory.