Infraredastronomy - The Research Garden
More Posts from Infraredastronomy and Others
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.
my life, my life, my life, my life. in the sunshine.
I really enjoyed doing this interview for the Brown Dwarf Podcast. It was such a pleasure talking with Phoenix.
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.
A comparison of available data for Jupiter in 1969 compared to 1996, since then we've learned even more. Paper Link
SOHO Coronagraph Experiment/Dirty Computer - Janelle Monae
“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”
A History of Black Futures
This week I gave an invited talk at NASA Goddard and took a day to visit the Afrofuturism exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I picked up the book inspired by this exhibit a year ago during an NYC trip and have been itching to go since.
This specific display in the photo made me tear up. From left to right it shows the flight suit of Trayvon Martin, the flight suit of Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek, and the flight suit of astronaut and former administrator of NASA Charles Bolden. Three scenarios: A future taken away, a future imagined, and a future that has been realized. When Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, he also took away his ability to be creative, curious, and explore the world around him.
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.
