Infraredastronomy - The Research Garden

“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”

Trip to Yokohama, Japan for SPIE

Reflections

I recently adopted a cat and have named him Lorenzo. At the shelter he was kind of a mean ass cat. Now that he lives as a solo cat I'm seeing a really soft side of him and it warms my heart. I also recently submitted an instrument concept for the Gemini Strategic Planning community input. Not entirely sure where that will go, but I'm proud that I put myself out there with my team.

I PASSED WITH ONLY ONE ERROR

I take my driving test tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reflections

The last time I posted here was almost 6 years ago.

The last time I was an avid user of tumblr was high school/early college, about a decade ago.

The social media site I have used the longest is twitter, but I dont find the same joy in that place anymore.

I wanted to get back to things sparked hopefulness, creativity, and curiosity.

A lot has changed on the internet and real life. I'm thankful to have reached three decades of life. I got my doctorate in Astronomy and Astrophysics last summer and started a postdoctoral position at the University of Arizona. Thanks to my fellowship I'll be able to transition into a tenure-track professor position. I'm learning how to mentor students on research projects and also try riskier projects of my own.

Pima Canyon Hike

Images of the Milky Way's galactic center in the mid-infrared.

Left: Image from Becklin and Neugebaur 1975

Right: Image from Dinh+ 2024

Despite not knowing alot about galaxies, I was absolutely blown away by all of the defined structure in the image on the right. During department tea time this week some colleagues were talking about their favorite papers that are older than themselves. I went back to my personal favorite, Infrared Observations of the Galactic Center (Becklin+ 1968) and checked out similar papers from the time. I came across a very old image of the inner parsec region shown on the right.

La Jolla Shores

A comparison of available data for Jupiter in 1969 compared to 1996, since then we've learned even more. Paper Link