Graduate Student at University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
I'm interested in the life cycle of comets, from activation in the centaur region through to their deactivation and dormancy among the near-Earth objects. My work primarily uses imaging and spectroscopic observations of comets, centaurs, and comet-candidates at optical and near-infrared wavelengths with ground-based telescopes, interpreted with help from laboratory experiements and orbital analyses. I will defend my PhD in Planetary Science in fall 2021, and I received by B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the Universiy of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2017. After I finish up in Tucson, I'll be joining the Lowell Observatory later this year as a postdoc.
Most meteor showers are the leftover dust trails of comets, but what about the showers whose parents aren't active? How do we figure out which of these are "normal" dormant comets and which ones are now-inactive asteroids? What can we learn about meteor shower formation from studies of these rare objects?
The Centaurs are the most recent escapees from the trans-Neptunian region and in turn are the primary source of the inner Solar System's Jupiter Family Comets. A small fraction of them show comet-like activity at distances too large for the sublimation of water ice to power it, so what's going on? What other ices and processes are in play, and how would a better understanding of Centaur evolution help us understand the JFCs and KBOs better?