Allison Jo Mercer

Allison Jo Mercer was raised in Maitland, FL where she was educated in the public schools system up until graduation from the International Baccalaureate program at Winter Park High School. Mercer went on to earn her BA in Astrophysics and Mathematics from Agnes Scott College and just completed her MS in Physics from The University of Iowa under the guidance of Assistant Professor Cornelia C. Lang.

Mercer's professional research interests are diverse, but include star formation, exploding stars, black holes, and galaxy formation. Mercer obtains her data from the Very Large Array run by the NRAO in Socorro, New Mexico, and she gets her data for teaching from the Iowa Robotic Observatory's Rigel Telescope.

Mercer is currently working on a multi-wavelength astronomy project studying features surrounding volcano-like erupting stars with her adviser Cornelia C. Lang. Called luminous blue variable stars (LBVs), they can be highly unstable, sometimes ejecting as much mass as is contained in our whole solar system! Mercer has combined different radio frequencies to look at the mass that has ejected from the surface of these stars.

Shown to the right is a pseudo-color image of the mass ejected from the Luminous Blue Variable at the center. This is an image of the radio emission at 22.4 GHz (blue) and 8.4 GHz (green). The star is embedded in the round knot at the center, and cannot be seen directly. What IS seen is actually the massive stellar wind of the star, surrounded by what is thought to be matter ejected from its surface thousands of years ago. Known as AFGL 2298, the amount of matter the star has expelled is equal to 2 times the mass of our sun!