Skip to main content
Gayathri Eknath

Miss Gayathri Eknath

Research student

School of Physics and Astronomy

Email
EknathG@cardiff.ac.uk
Campuses
Queen's Buildings - North Building, Room N/3.24, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA

Overview

I'm a postgraduate research student at the Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology looking at properties of dust and gas within the interstellar medium of galaxies. I am supervised by Professor Stephen Eales and Dr Matthew Smith.

Publication

2022

2021

Articles

Conferences

Research

My current research focuses on observations of the Andromeda galaxy in order to understand how properties of dust, in particular the dust emissivity index, varies within it. Dust grains absorb starlight and re-emit this light at infrared wavelengths. The intensity of this emission can be described by a modified blackbody spectrum, where the shape of this spectrum can be modified by changes in the dust emissivity index. Hence, studying the cause of variations in the dust emissivity index may give us clues about the physical composition of dust grains. 

I am also looking at testing a Bayesian algorithm developed at Cardiff called Point Process Mapping (PPMAP) with synthetic observations of galaxies. PPMAP estimates the surface density of dust whilst removing the requirement for high resolution observations to be smoothed to a lower resolution. My work involves creating synthetic observations to test how well PPMAP recovers the surface-density of dust at extragalactic spatial scales.

Teaching

Undergraduate

PX1228: Introduction to Astrophysics (2018-19)

PX2140: The Stars and Their Planets (2018-20)

Postgraduate

PXT991: Advanced Techniques in Astrophysics (2020-23)

PXT992: Advanced Study and Research Skills (2019-23)

Supervisors

Stephen Eales

Stephen Eales

Head of Astronomy Group
Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology (Co-Director)

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith

Lecturer
Director of Postgraduate Research Studies
Astronomy Group
Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology