Author ORCID Identifier

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9759-038X

Date of Award

5-2-2022

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Fabien Baron

Second Advisor

Theoten Brummelaar

Third Advisor

D. Michael Crenshaw

Fourth Advisor

Stuart Jefferies

Fifth Advisor

John Monnier

Abstract

All but a few Active Galactic Nuclei are too distant for any single aperture telescope to resolve, yet the geometry of these objects is key to our understanding of the evolution of galaxies in the universe. To study the geometry of Active Galactic Nuclei, methods are leveraged using smaller telescopes to gain resolution rather than relying on larger and larger single aperture telescopes. Principally, these are via reverberation mapping which utilizes temporal and spectral resolution to gain spatial resolution and interferometry which sacrifices the light gathering power of large aperture telescopes for high angular resolution. To provide a tool for recovering geometric indicators of AGNs from reverberation mapping data, an image reconstructing algorithm is developed utilizing the alternating direction method of multipliers with compressed sensing regularization. This new algorithm is applied to the Arp 151 dataset from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008. In addition to the reverberation mapping algorithm, the first calibrated extragalactic results for the CHARA Array are presented for NGC 4151. At the extreme detection limit for the instruments of the CHARA Array, the observational strategies utilized for successful observations and the results obtained are discussed.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/28907523

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