Infraredastronomy - The Research Garden

The People Behind JWST

I was featured in an article about the people who support and use JWST. I was so excited to share more of my personal experience working with the data. Link to article here.

Another video that highlights some of my work and hopes for JWST are here in this TikTok posted by the SETI Institute. The interview was done by Franck Marchis.

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

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

Top: Cathedral of St. Augustine

Bottom: Piece from Juan Obando and Yoshua Okón: DEMO

I PASSED WITH ONLY ONE ERROR

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

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.

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.

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