Research Interests
My primary areas of research interest are star formation and high angular resolution astronomy. In particular, I use a variety of observational techniques to perform imaging and spectroscopy of the near environment of young stars at the highest resolution obtainable. The interaction of the star with its environment regulates the star formation process and provides the conditions necessary for the growth and evolution of circumstellar disks and, ultimately, planets.
Working at the edge of achievable observational performance requires state-of-the-art instrumentation. Click on the Projects tab to see some of the hardware initiatives in which I am involved.
Individual Projects
I have worked on a fairly wide variety of scientific topics. Here, you can see some quick views of individual research projects and papers, organized by field.
Planetary Science
Photometric Phase Curve of the Rings of Uranus
Imaging and Spectroscopy of SL-9 Impacts
Mapping the surface of Titan from Earth
Star Formation
Spectral Imaging of T Tauri Revisited And again!
Wind-Disk-Cloud Interactions in T Tauri
Shocked H2 in Infrared Companion Systems
New molecular hydrogen outflows
Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy
The space density of methane dwarfs
Globally shocked molecular hydrogen in NGC 6240
Distribution and kinematics of Galactic Center ionized gas
The search for the true Galactic Center
Instrumentation
Near Infrared Fabry-Perot Interferometer
Active Control System for Fabry-Perot
Performance of OH Suppression Schemes
Fiber-based near-infrared multi-object spectrograph
Solid ZnSe grisms for the near-infrared
The Darwin mission to search for Earth-like planets
Novel micropupil based integral field spectrograph
LINC-NIRVANA Fizeau Imaging Interferometer