2023 Project Description

Uncover Complex Molecules in Line Forests

Supervisors

Kuo-Song Wang, Yu-Hsuan Hwang, and Chin-Fei Lee
Find out more about supervisors on ASIAA website

Task Description and Goals

Star-forming regions in our Galaxy are rich in complex organic molecules (COMs) formed at various stages of star formation. With the superb sensitivity of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), more and more new species have been identified in the past decade (CDMS). Usually the line identification process is tedious and involves a lot of human intervention due to the fact that the spectra at mm/submm regime are extremely full and complicated.

The goal of this project is to prototype a new tool to reduce human intervention as much as possible in the line identification process. A fully automated tool would be extremely powerful to decode the chemical composition of star forming regions not only spectrally but also spatially in a much shorter time scale, hence to be able to boost our understanding of physics and chemistry in star forming regions more efficiently.

The ideas implemented in the prototype will eventually be integrated with CARTA – Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy, a new generation image visualization and analysis tool designed for ALMA, VLA, and SKA pathfinders.

Required Background

Object-oriented Python 3 OR object-oriented C++