Question

Need help coming up with an astronomy research project!

Answer 1

Actually, looking at rotation curves would be an excellent project. I was too lazy to look at the telescope specifications, but I'm assuming at least one of those has a spectrometer. Spectroscopy is extremely important in cosmological physics, and you should be able to understand the process with a bit of chemistry/physics knowledge. Trying to model a dark matter distribution would be very ambitious--but if you can find a way to measure the column density of luminous matter, and plot it's expected rotation curves, you can definitely come up with some cool models.

Answer 2

okay so how would the project involve rotation curves??

Answer 3

Hmm, so if you view an edge on galaxy, as depicted crudely:
Or basically, the left side is approaching while the right side is receding. Then you would know that the Doppler effect would cause a blueshift for the approaching side, and a redshift for the receding side. E.g., if your spectrometer normally gives you something like the first figure in this graph (probably at the center of the galaxy):
Then the second one shows lower wavelengths (or a blueshift, on the approaching side of the galaxy) and the third one shows higher wavelengths (a redshift, on the receding side of the galaxy), then you can take the ratios of the spectral lines, and be able to find the net velocity.