My current research projects are heavily involved in radio astronomy, in particular polarization properties of radio galaxies.
A Brief History
I grew up in Peterborough, Ontario Canada where I graduated from Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School in 1999. From there I headed to the University of Western Ontario to receive a B.Sc. in Astronomy in 2004 and then onto the University of Calgary for my M.Sc. in 2006 and Ph.D. in 2011. I got married in 2010 and changed my name from Grant to Banfield, so if you see anything out there in astronomy by Julie Grant, it was probably me.
March 18, 2011
Our paper on "Polarized Radio Sources: A Study of Luminosity, Redshift and Infrared Colors" has been accepted to The Astrophysical Journal. The article is currently in press and the PDF will be available shortly.
Abstract: "The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory Deep Field polarization study has been matched with the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic survey of the European Large Area Infrared Space Observatory Survey North 1 field. We have used VLA observations with a total intensity rms of 87 microJy/beam to match SWIRE counterparts to the radio sources. Infrared color analysis of our radio sample shows that the majority of polarized sources are elliptical galaxies with an embedded active galactic nucleus. Using available redshift catalogs, we found 429 radio sources of which 69 are polarized with redshifts in the range of 0.04 < z < 3.2. We find no correlation between redshift and percentage polarization for our sample. However, for polarized radio sources, we find a weak correlation between increasing percentage polarization and decreasing luminosity."
November 2010
I have been awarded a postdoc position at Australia National Telescope Facility to begin in January 2011. I will be working with the large international ASKAP EMU collaboration. EMU stands for "Evolutionary Map of the Universe", a radio sky survey project covering the entire Southern Sky as part of the Austailian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) survey science projects.
Julie Banfield