Miss Gayathri Eknath

Research student

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

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.

Date
Type

2022

Athikkat-Eknath, G., Eales, S. A., Smith, M. W. L., Schruba, A., Marsh, K. A. and Whitworth, A. P. 2022. Investigating variations in the dust emissivity index in the andromeda galaxy. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 511(4), pp. 5287-5300. (10.1093/mnras/stab3135)

2021

Smith, M. W. L. et al. 2021. The HASHTAG project: The first submillimeter images of the Andromeda Galaxy from the ground.. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 257, article number: 52. (10.3847/1538-4365/ac23d0)
Anderson, M., Askey, J., Eknath, G., Norman, M. and Sztranyovszky, Z. 2021. "The Research Group Teaching Model": PhD students as research group leaders, mentors, and role models. Presented at: Centre for Education Innovation Annual Learning & Teaching Conference 2021, 1-2 July 2021.
Lewis, R., Roche, P., Askey, J., Sztranyovszky, Z., Eknath, G., Norman, M. and Anderson, M. 2021. The Online Research Group teaching model – ensuring authentic and robust remote learning for MSc students. Presented at: Cardiff University Learning and Teaching Conference 2021, Virtual, 1-2 July 2021.

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.

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)