Every year, OSU astronomy graduate students publish about 20 first author papers. The department awards the Ann S. Tuttle Paper Prize to one outstanding graduate student-led paper published during the preceding year, in this case 2023. This award was endowed by the estate of Ann Tuttle. Ms. Tuttle set up the fund to show her appreciation for the kindness shown her by Ann and Gerald Newsom (Gerald is a long time professor and former chair of the department). 

 

This year, the graduate studies committee is extremely pleased to award the Ann S. Tuttle Graduate Student Paper Prize to Sebastian Lopez for his paper: 
 

In this paper, Sebastian analyzed Chandra X-ray data on the NGC 253, one of the two most prominent nearby starburst galaxies, to understand the hot, x-ray emitting gas in the galactic outflow and the disk. Sebastian measured the gradient in the temperature, density, and metallicity of the hot gas as it moved away from the galaxy, providing critical but rare observational constraints on how metals and gas escape from galaxies. In addition to demonstrating important details of the geometry of the outflow via comparison to locally produced models, Sebastian showed that charge exchange emission contributes a significant fraction of the overall x-ray flux from the outflows, a point not previously widely appreciated. Although it only came out last year, the paper has already been cited 15 times and more important this is just fundamental work on how hot outflows from starburst galaxies work.

 

Please join me in congratulating Sebastian on this award and his great paper!