Gaia Project Ideas
Collecting project ideas for Gaia DR3
- “EBHRD”
- Finding the “best eclipsing binaries”
- if the TESS-based metric is ready (& it is!), apply it to the 2MILLION Gaia EBs and find the “best” targets!
- this is what i’m planning to work on first! :D
- SETI-related projects:
- Dyson sphere stuff (e.g. mis-matches between luminosities and spectral type/class)
- Outliers in super-color space (machine learning fun times)
- Surveying the WOW! Fields for variability (play off this paper some) (fun student project!)
- SETI Ellipsoid, can we compute the SN1987A Ellipsoid crossing time & uncertainties for the entire 1.8B stars? (via AXS+Astropy?)
- Gaia light curve from Boyajian’s Star
- Gaia for spectroscopic flux calibration?
- could we quickly define/update spectroscopic sensitivity functions using Gaia spectra?
- e.g. comparing old IRAF onedstds to the Gaia BP/RP low-res spectra
- Gaia light curve for QX Cas (and other special/weird systems)
- which star is eclipsing?! (good first project)
- Stellar rotation:
- match Gaia rotation to Kepler… how precise & accurate?
- Gaia + TESS, Gaia + Kepler…
- can we see the rotation period gap with Gaia?
- rotation in clusters? (low-hanging fruit if any!)
- Binary star density across galaxy
- looking @ spatial density of equal-mass binaries
- Played with idea in 2018
- Could be done entirely (initially) on AXS/Epyc
- (Re)make textbook figures with new data!
- literally any textbook has figures that can/should be replicated w/ Gaia!
- Gaia Wilson Bappu (w/ SLH!)
- already gathering existing HK data (repo)
- replicate Wallerstein+2019, in honor of George
- can we do WBE with the Ca IRT alone?
- Activity Cycles from Ca IRT?
- competition from Gaia DR3 team probably
- compare Gaia data to e.g. Mt Wilson HK archive? (can we see activity cycles from Gaia photometry alone?)
- “Everything in its right place”
- stars in CMD in Hiparcos vs Gaia, or Gaia over time…
- played with this idea in 2018
- Look for specific star motions across interesting regions of the CMD (Post-AGB stars, He Flash, etc)
- Searching for new PNe in Gaia… spectra could be useful?