Investigating the Contribution of Stellar Convection in the Large uncertainties in Gaia Parallaxes of Red Super Giant Stars

Over time red supergiant stars tend to have their photo-center shifted due to convection, creating various bright spots across the star. The goal of this research project is to create a tool that reads in a reconstructed image from optical interferometric observations and refines the image to then compute the photo center of a Red super giant as accurately as possible. This tool would be useful as the photo-center of a star directly impacts Gaia's parallax calculation

This project is important because it can help astronomers accurately map the location of a star in space, allowing for further research on Red super giant stars. Another importance benefit of this project is that, we can develop methods to use Gaia observation to study the convection of red supergiants that are too far to observe with an optical interferometer.