Students, Alumni Attend Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Hawaii

Several Wesleyan undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and alumni attended the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jan. 4–8, 2020.

“The meeting was a huge success, and we were thrilled to have such a large contingent of Wesleyan students able to attend and present their research,” said Seth Redfield, associate professor and chair of astronomy.

Wesleyan McNair Fellow Rachel Marino presented a poster titled “HD106906 Debris Disk Morphology and Origin of an External Perturber.” Her advisor is Meredith Hughes, associate professor of astronomy.

Hunter Vannier ’20 shared his research titled “Mapping the Local Interstellar Medium: Using Hubble to Look Back at the ISM along the Sun’s Historical Trajectory.” His advisor is Seth Redfield.

Wesleyan McNair Fellow Gilberto Garcia ’20 shared his poster titled “From Einstein to Chandra: Dramatic long-term X-ray variability in AGNs.” His advisor is Ed Moran, professor of astronomy.

Fallon Konow ’20 presented “Constructing a Survey of the Local Interstellar Medium using Hubble Spectra.” Her advisor is Seth Redfield.

David Vizgan ’21 presented a project titled “Using [CII] luminosity as a tracer of gas mass @ z=6,” which was based on work from a summer research program in Copenhagen.

Graduate student Justin Perea presented a poster titled, “Emission-line active galaxies and the Cosmic X-ray Background.” His advisor is Ed Moran.

Graduate student Katharine Hesse spoke on “Removing (and Using!) Contaminating Field Stars Around Bright K2 Targets.” Her advisor is Seth Redfield.

Alumni attending included Ismael Mireles MA ’19, Amy Steele MA ’14, Raquel Martinez MA ’13, and Chris Dieck MA ’08.

Redfield and Ilaria Carleo, a postdoctoral researcher in the Astronomy Department, also attended the meeting.