Spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study the physical conditions of stars, growing black holes, and interstellar gas. I specialize in infrared and radio spectroscopy using telescopes like JWST, ALMA, and the VLA to measure atomic and molecular emission lines. My research stems from a rich history of infrared astronomy and past missions like Spitzer, Herschel, and ISO.

In Cycle 2 I was awarded 40 hours of time on JWST to take 5-14um spectra of galaxies 10 billion light years away. This data, illustrated above, is teaching us about dust molecules that shield young star-forming regions from the intense radiation fields generated by previous generations of stars. Without this dust the gas in a galaxy would otherwise be far too hot for further generations of stars to form.

The visualization of my spectra above is inspired by the album cover art of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, which itself was inspired by Jocelyn Bell Burnell's discovery of pulsar radiation in 1967 and then Harold Craft Jr's visualizations of pulsar signals in 1970. For a concise summary of this history see this article.

My students/mentees (M. Eleazer, V. Vanicek) and I are working hard to calibrate, reduce, and analyze these data. Keep an eye out for a paper soon that will summarize the exciting lessons we are learning!