Kelly Holley Bockelmann ... (formerly known as Jocelyn Kelly Holley Minske)



Research Interests:

Dynamicist by Day


Right now, I'm working on classifying the orbital structure of triaxial galaxies. For an update on this research, click here. (This link is written mostly to keep my collaborators up to date on our work, so you may not find this very useful if you're looking for a primer on the topic.)

  • You can go here to look at a talk I'm about to give at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics.

    My thesis simulated the stellar dynamics of elliptical galaxy mergers. We think that it's not unusual for galaxies to collide, or merge, with other galaxies at somepoint in their lifetimes, sometimes shredding one of the interacting galaxies in the process. The whole merger takes far too long to observe directly, but we can model mergers with computer simulations. That's what I do: I build fake galaxies on my computer and smash them together.


  • For a copy of my CV, click here.

  • Dr. Doug Richstone and I wrote a paper about mergers of high density-contrast, purely stellar galaxies selected from the core Fundamental Plane. Click here for a copy.

    Movie of the small galaxy on a head-on merger with a galaxy that is 10 times more massive.

  • I also studied the effect that central black holes have on galaxy mergers. It looks like black holes might play an important part in preserving the slope of the Fundamental Plane. When the large galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole, the merger is totally different. Click here for a copy of this paper.


    • Movie of the small galaxy during a head-on merger with a galaxy that is 10 times more massive, and the host to a supermassive black hole. It's hard not to notice that this time, the small galaxy is totally disrupted. The last frame shows the distribution of the debris.

    Movie of the small galaxy on a more circular encounter with a galaxy that is 100 times more massive. Again, notice that the small galaxy is destroyed.

    Movie of the small galaxy on a more circular encounter with a galaxy that is 10 times more massive. This time, the small galaxy is not destroyed and instead forms a disk. Find out more about these results from the thesis.

    Observer by Night

    Well ok, I really only get to observe when people let me tag along, or when they can't make the run themselves, but I've racked up a surprising amount of telescope time for a simulationist!


  • Kaspar von Braun, Kristin Chiboucas, Jose Salgado, Guy Worthey and I looked at color and metallicity correlations for metal-poor giants in clusters. Click here for the paper.





    You Can Find Me At:

    418 A. W. Smith
    Department of Astronomy
    Case Western Reserve University
    10900 Euclid Avenue
    Cleveland, OH 44106
    (216) 368-6699 (office)
    kelly@eor.astr.cwru.edu

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