Infraredastronomy - The Research Garden

After giving colloquia at Wesleyan and the University of Michigan, I took some time to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. The museum is the site of the first Motown headquarters and recording studio. It was such a pleasure to see an important piece of Black history.

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.

I really enjoyed doing this interview for the Brown Dwarf Podcast. It was such a pleasure talking with Phoenix.

Pima Canyon Hike

I PASSED WITH ONLY ONE ERROR

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

The Importance of Deuterium

Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one extra proton. The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) is an indicator of mass in isolated substellar objects. Brown dwarfs that have more than 12 times the mass of Jupiter are theoretically warm enough to fuse deuterium, causing smaller atmospheric D/H ratios. In Solar System objects the D/H ratio can be altered by temperature, material transport, or atmospheric escape. In Rowland+ 2024 (accepted ApJL), we were able to detect deuterium for the first time outside of our solar system in WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf.

The overall D/H ratio is inferred by detecting both deuterated methane (CH3D) and normal methane (CH4) in the atmosphere of WISE 0855. From the data we also estimate that WISE 0855 has two times more mass than Jupiter. Both the deueterium abundance and mass are consistent with theoretical expectations. Deuterium is not exclusive to gravitationally bound companions and can be used to infer mass in both brown dwarfs and exoplanets. I was super excited to be apart of this paper and also previous work demonstrating we could detect CH3D is most cold brown dwarfs.

Last week I attended the joint meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists and National Society of Hispanic Physicists in Houston, Texas. I enjoyed seeing friendly colleagues and meeting new researchers. It was an honor to give an invited talk in the astronomy session and I'm happy I could convey the importance of brown dwarfs to folks outside of my subfield.

The first photo is everyone from the University of Arizona (minus Carlos Vargas) who attended. Graduate students Jasmin Washington (Steward Observatory, center) and Kiana McFadden (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, left) presented their work as well. I had fun walking around an exploring downtown Houston in the evenings. I absolutely adored the POST, which had an open plan plant store with a stage for jazz.

LBT/NOMIC spectroscopy

NOMIC is one of the infrared cameras within the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer. It is primarily used to take images at 8-13 microns. When NOMIC was built, a low resolution grism was installed within one of the filter wheels. Last Fall I was finally able to test it on sky to see how it performed. Lambda Persei is a relatively bright star with a spectral type of A0, similar to Vega. The NOMIC spectrum of Lambda Persei is shown in blue with black error bars. A spectrum of Vega from Rieke+ 2008 is shown in red. They match pretty well besides the region between 9.5 and 10 microns. This is likely due to the telluric calibrator star being observed at a very different air mass than the target. Getting a good telluric calibrator beyond 8 microns is very challenging for ground-based observations. A significant chunk of stars are too dim to get high signal-to-noise in a short period of time relative to the time required for science observations.

my life, my life, my life, my life. in the sunshine.