Hello! My name is Ray Garner and I am a PhD candidate working towards my PhD in Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I previously attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina where I graduated with a B.S. in Physics.
While I was at Furman, I completed research in general relativity with Dr. Bill Baker and fellow student Zachary Carter. During the summer of 2017, I attended a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. There, I worked on ionized gas kinematics of nearby, low-mass galaxies with Dr. Liese van Zee.
Currently, I am working with Dr. Chris Mihos on a detailed analysis of the spiral galaxy Messier 101 (NGC 5457) and its small satellite group using the deep, wide-field, narrowband imaging capabilities of the Burrell Schmidt 24/36-inch telescope.
BS in Physics, 2018
Furman University
We present deep, narrowband imaging of the spiral galaxy M101 and its group environment to search for star-forming dwarf galaxies and outlying HII regions. We find no large population of outlying HII regions or undiscovered star-forming dwarfs in the M101 Group, as most sources (93%) are consistent with being M101 outer-disk HII regions. The lack of any hidden population of low-luminosity star-forming dwarfs around M101 suggests a shallow faint-end slope (as flat at $\alpha ~ -1.0$) for the star-forming luminosity function in the M101 Group.