Christopher Chapman ‘21

Christopher Chapman (F&M ‘20) worked on stacking broadband images of Lyman-alpha selected galaxies, taking over a project begun by a former student. These galaxies are often only detected individually in the narrow-band Lyman-alpha images that trace excited gas, but by taking broadband images at the locations where the galaxies are seen in Lyman-alpha and averaging these images together, Christopher worked to determine the average luminosity of the galaxies at wavelengths of light that are sensitive to the stars in these galaxies. Christopher also worked to fit and remove spatial variations in the sky background that would otherwise produce systematic errors in the galaxy luminosities.

Christopher was a double major in astrophysics and computer science at F&M and decided to pursue a career in computer science after graduation. He is now an Associate Software Engineer at HII Technical Solutions in Maryland.