The Echoes of a Supernova
Spectra from the light echoes of distant supernovae can be used to probe the three dimensional structure of these massive and poorly-understood explosions.
Engineering at the SOAR Telescope in Chile
I recently participated in an engineering trip to the SOAR Telescope in Chile, where I helped with numerous maintenance and upgrades for the Goodman Spectrograph.
Spots and Tantrums: A Moody X-ray Binary
What do you call two stars hurtling around each other with bursts of X-rays every few decades? An X-ray transient, of course! This special flavor of X-ray binary features a neutron star or black hole together with a low-mass star.
Cloudy with a chance of Carbon Monoxide
Tune in now for the first extrasolar weather map of a nearby brown dwarf, made using Doppler imaging.
The Noble Crab
The Crab Nebula ups its game when it’s found to host the first molecule containing a noble gas to be found in space.
Constraining fine-structure constant variations using QSOs
From measurements of quasar spectra, we can determine whether or not the fine structure constant is really a constant.