Molly Peeples

Molly S. Peeples
molly [at] astronomy [dot] ohio [dash] state [dot] edu

Department of Astronomy

The Ohio State University

4029 McPherson Laboratory
140 W. 18^th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210

me, on a foggy morning at the 2.4-m Hiltner Telescope

Education

Ph.D. in Astronomy from Ohio State, 2010 (expected). Thesis advisor: David Weinberg.
M.S. in Astronomy from Ohio State, 2007.
S.B. in Course VIII (Physics) from M.I.T., 2005. Thesis advisor: Paul Schechter.

Research Interests

My research interests span a variety of areas generally related to cosmology and galaxy evolution. Most of what I am working on currently falls into at least one of these areas:

Galaxies! evolution, outflows, and feedback; chemical, stellar, and gaseous compositions; star formation efficiency; phenomenology, scaling relations
The intergalactic medium, the 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D Lyman-α forest, the metal content of the IGM, hydrogen and helium reionziation
Hydrodynamic simulations: numerical effects, star formation feedback recipes, accurately connecting small- and large-scale structure
Weak lensing by galaxy clusters, cosmic shear, systematics related to measurement methods, determination of cosmological parameters

One of the larger projects I am currently working on is testing the numerically robustness supernova-driven galaxy winds and feedback implementations are in smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations. By using a suite of high-resolution idealized "wind tubes" I am figuring out what is actually (and should be) going on in the lower-resolution cosmological simulations. These tests will lead to both a more physical understanding of how to interpret the effects of winds in cosmological simulations and more physically plausible and numerically robust star formation feedback recipes in SPH codes.

Selected Publications

8. Pressure Support vs. Thermal Broadening in the Lyman-α Forest I: Effects of the Equation of State on Longitudinal Structure; Peeples, Weinberg, Davé, Fardal, & Katz (2009), submitted to MNRAS. [ astro-ph | high-res | wordle ]
7. Pressure Support vs. Thermal Broadening in the Lyman-α Forest II: Effects of the Equation of State on Transverse Structure; Peeples, Weinberg, Davé, Fardal, & Katz (2009), submitted to MNRAS. [ astro-ph | high-res | wordle ]
6. Outliers from the Mass–Metallicity Relation II: A Sample of Massive Metal-Poor Galaxies from SDSS; Peeples, Pogge, & Stanek (2009), ApJ, 695, 259. [ astro-ph | ADS | high-res | wordle ]
5. Outliers from the Mass–Metallicity Relation I: A Sample of Metal-Rich Dwarf Galaxies from SDSS; Peeples, Pogge, & Stanek (2008) ApJ, 685, 904. [ astro-ph | ADS | high-res | wordle ]
4. A Study of Stellar Photometric Variability Within the Central 4 pc of the Galactic Center with Infrared Image Subtraction; Peeples, Stanek, & DePoy (2007) AcA, 57, 173. [ astro-ph | ADS | wordle ]
3. The Nature of the Variable Galactic Center Source GCIRS 16SW Revisited: A Massive Eclipsing Binary; Peeples et al. (2007) ApJL, 654, 61L. [ astro-ph | ADS | wordle ]
2. The Shear TEsting Programme 2: Factors affecting high precision weak lensing analyses; Massey et al. (2007) MNRAS, 376, 13. [ astro-ph | ADS ]
1. The Connection between Barstrength and Circumnuclear Dust Structure; Peeples and Martini (2006) ApJ, 652, 1097. [ astro-ph | ADS | high-res figures | wordle ]

You can also search for me on astro-ph or on ADS. Or you can take a look at my c.v. or have a glimpse into the future.

Where is Molly?

Last update: Fri Oct 30 18:03:54 EDT 2009