1. Modeling Spectra of Solid Methane By Linda Henneberg Mentor: Dr. Kris Andersen Northern Arizona University SpaceGrant Symposium April 2009

2. Outline Why is modeling methane important? Getting to know solid methane Methods and procedure Data and results Future work

3. Why is this important? Only way to gather information about astronomical objects. Image from: http://www.cnes.fr

4. Methane Image from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil e:Methane-3D-balls.png CH 4 Bond angle is 109.5 o H H H HC

5. Phase II Image from: I. Nakahata, et al. (1999) Jmol: http://www.jmol.org/

6. Methods Generalized gradient approximation (PBE) 6x6x6 k-point grid Latin for “first principles” 400 eV cutoff energy

7. Data and Analysis a = 4.65 ang

8. Future Work Find the lattice constant for phase II methane Analyze the vibrational spectra – Compare to experiments and observations Repeat the process for nitrogen

9. Thank you! My mentor, Dr. Kris Andersen NASA, for providing funding for the SpaceGrant program Kathleen Stigmon and Dr. Nadine Barlow, for all the work they put into this program

10. Questions?