Nadja Aldarondo Quiñones
MIT Department: Physics
Faculty Mentor: Prof. Andrew Vanderburg
Research Supervisor: Sydney Jenkins
Undergraduate Institution: University of Puerto Rico, Rico Piedras
Hometown: Toa Alta, Puerto Rico
Website: LinkedIn
Biography
Nadja Aldarondo Quiñones is a senior Physics undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Currently, she finds herself at MIT working on relating a star’s X-ray emission to its age in an effort to establish a relation between the two. Last year, Nadja participated in the WAVE Summer Research Program at Caltech, working on programming a polarization classification system for FRB20201124A. Additionally, for the past three years, she has had the opportunity to work in the RockSat program, where they have developed sounding rocket experiments that measure humidity and temperature and search for the presence of biosignatures 150-170km above sea level. Participating in these programs has helped her develop a diverse skillset, which includes soldering, programming, data analysis, and collaborating on a team. Working on these different projects has inclined Nadja to continue working on planetary sciences, specifically with a focus on exoplanet research.
Abstract
Investigating the relationship between stellar age and X-Ray emission
Nadja Aldarondo Quiñones1, Andrew Vanderburg2, Sydney Jenkins2,
Melinda Soares-Furtado3
1Department of Natural Sciences, University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras
2Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison
While astronomers have established techniques to estimate many physical properties of stars, including mass, radius, surface gravity, and temperature; their age is a much more challenging problem. Techniques such as asteroseismology and white dwarf companion age-dating have helped date the age of some stars, but the majority of them still don’t have accurate age measurements. Stellar X-Ray emission might be a way of measuring a star’s age that can be applied to a star regardless of its environment. Specifically, a star’s X-Ray luminosity decreases over time. Previously, Booth et al. 2017 found that older stars have a steeper decline in X-ray luminosity than younger stars. In this work, we revisit that conclusion with new data from the recently launched eROSITA mission. Using new data from eROSITA along with the original data used by Booth et al, , we find that there is astrophysical scatter present in the X-ray/age relationship, and the slope of this age-activity relationship is lower than previously reported. Both the lower slope and astrophysical scatter make it more challenging to use X-ray emission to measure a star’s age.
