About Me
Hi there! I’m Samantha Scibelli, a Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, VA. I am interested in the broader topics of star formation, astrochemistry and radio astronomy. See Current Research Interests and follow me on ResearchGate!
Before my start at NRAO, I completed my PhD as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. During my thesis I focused on constraining the physical, kinematic, and chemical structure of low-mass prestellar cores to better understand their evolution.
In my free time I enjoy cuddling with my cat, Tabatha, going for hikes, cooking new recipes and reading popular science books. Passionate about science writing myself, I also completed a Science Communications Certificate at the University of Arizona. A short memoir, describing my early childhood and how I got interested in astronomy, has been published online at terrian.org. I’ve written science articles on the hidden secrets of local squirrels in The Daily Wildcat, and another on how satellite communication networks will negatively affect radio astronomy in the Green Valley News.
Current Research Interests
Complex Organic Chemistry in Starless and Prestellar Cores in Taurus
Astrochemists and astrobiologists are interested in understanding the origins of organic chemistry, the basis for life on Earth, and believe it is very likely to have had its origin at the very early stages of solar system formation. A starless, or prestellar, core is a dense clump of gas and dust which acts as a primordial birthplace for a low-mass (solar-type) star. I used the ARO 12M radio dish on Kitt Peak to search for complex organic molecules (COMs) in prestellar cores located along the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a filamentary star forming region (shown below). By studying the chemistry within these cores we can better understand their physical properties and evolutionary timescales. [Check out this astrobites article!] & [News Link]
Adapted Herschel Image of the Taurus Molecular Cloud (~135pc away)
Credit: ESA/Herschel/NASA/JPL-Caltech, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Acknowledgement: R. Hurt (JPL-Caltech)
3D Radiative Transfer Modeling
I am interested in understanding how these starless cores evolve by tracing not only their chemistry, but their physical structure. I performed 3D radiative transfer dust modeling with the code RADMC-3D, which was aided by high resolution (12 and 19 arcsecond) dust continuum maps (at 1.2mm and 2.0mm) of the B10 region within the same Taurus L1495 filament picture above. Constraints were placed on the central densities, density slopes, aspect ratios, dust opacities, and external radiation field strengths for 14 cores embedded within B10. The models were used to assess the stability and evolutionary state of each COM-rich core, which in turn has shed light on the conditions needed for COM chemistry to thrive.
Adapted from Scibelli et al., 2023
Is Taurus Unique? Precursor Prebiotic Chemistry in the Perseus Molecular Cloud
A large multi-source survey in the Perseus Molecular Cloud using both the ARO 12m telescope and the Yebes 40m telescope found a prevalence of COMs in the majority of starless and prestellar cores targeted. Check out Astrochem Podcast Episode!
The survey paper has led to numerous follow-up projects! Including 1) comparisons to MHD simulations, 2) detections of numerous large carbon-chain species (Pokorny-Yadav, Scibelli, et al., in prep), and 3) the first detections of biologically relavant phosphorous-bearing molecules toward a shocked starless core (Scibelli, et al., in prep)!
Previous Research Interests
V Hydrae, an AGB star in Transition
As an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I worked on analyzing Hubble Data of the carbon star V Hydrae (V Hya). This unique object provides insight into the nature of the launching mechanism of jet-like outflows that are believed to be the cause of the poorly understood transition phase of AGB stars into aspherical planetary nebulae. [News Link]
Dark Matter and Gravitational Lensing
As an undergraduate physics student at Stony Brook University, I was interested in dark matter and gravitational lensing. My project focused on trying to break the degeneracies between disc and halo contributions in spiral galaxy rotation curves by combining kinematics and lensing. [ADS,arxiv]
Additionally, the summer before I started my undergraduate program, I interned at the Laser Teaching Center in the basement of the physics building at Stony Brook. I worked on understanding the caustic patterns that arise from evaporating water droplets, with the foresight in mind that understanding caustics would help me to formulate a project on gravitional lensing. [Undergrad Research Page]