Prof. Michael D. Stage
Visiting Assistant Prof.  of Astronomy
Mount Holyoke College
    and
Five College Astronomy Dept.

PhD., MIT 2003
B.S. with honors, Caltech, 1997










Astronomers: do you know where I am?
                        or here is probably even harder?

Astronomy and Astrophysics Courses:
Mount Holyoke Classes
Spring 2010: Survey of the Universe Lecture - A100 (Coming Soon!)
Spring 2010: Survey of the Universe Labs -A101 (Coming Soon!)
Fall 2009: Survey of the Universe Labs
Spring 2009: Survey of the Universe Labs
Fall 2008: Survey of the Universe Labs

UMass Astronomy Classes
Astronomy 101:
 Spring 2009: The Solar System

Astronomy 100: Exploring the Universe
 Spring 2008 (Honors)
Spring 2007
Fall 2006

Astrophysics Research:
Cosmic ray diffusion near the Bohm limit in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant

The major focus of my research for the last six years has been the non-thermal emission from accelerated electrons in the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant (SNR), using data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and in collaboration with Glenn E. Allen, John C. Houck, and John E. Davis at the MIT Kavli Institute. I am presently combining my earlier results (below) from spectral and spatial analysis of Chandra observations of Cas A with higher-energy spectra obtained with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and the Suzaku X-ray Telescope. This research is supported by a Chandra X-ray Observatory Cycle 10 research grant. I presented preliminary results were at "Supernova Remnants and Pulsar Wind Nebulae in the Chandra Era" (2009) in Boston. We also published some combined Chandra and RXTE fits in (Allen, Stage & Houck) from the International Cosmic Ray Conference 2007. My previous work includes:

2006 Nat Phys Paper: Nature Physics 2, pp614-619, doi:10.1038/nphys391
In this issue, intoductory blurb by Don Ellison, original preprint (at arXiv) and final article.

2006 Press Release: Chandra X-ray Center: Chandra Discovers Cosmic Pinball Machine

Learn more about S-Lang and ISIS, the programming language and software which made our analysis of 1.1 million seconds of Chandra X-Ray Observatory data possible.  Here's the ApJS paper on the non-thermal models (or the arXiv version).

FITS format files of the major image maps presented in the article will be made available at this site in the future.

2009 3-D Remnant Paper: In a collaboration with Tracey DeLaney and her colleagues, some of those FITS files I created on the way to the arcade have been used in conjunction with Spitzer Infrared Telescope observations of Cas A to create a fantastic three dimensional model of the Cassiopeia A remnant. The paper (DeLaney, Rudnuck, Stage et al.) has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal; you can find animationsof the 3D structure here and the press release for that project (and a second, unrelated work) here.

Thermal Emission from Remnant Ejecta
I occasionally study the thermal emission from remnants, for example this analysis with UMass' Daniel Q. Wang of a somewhat peculiar supernova remnant G93.3+6.9 observed by the new Suzaku X-ray Telescope. I presented some results at Suzaku 2007 (Dec. 2007).

Radio Galaxy Survey
I'm also working with Stephen Schneider on some simulations to help understand the detection limits of the fields in the  Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey (AGES) which you can read more about in this preprint.


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