Rachael Roettenbacher (UM PhD 2016) received the prestigious Olivier Chesneau Prize which recognizes the best PhD Thesis in High Angular Resolution Imaging over the past 2 years.
https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann17021/
I wanted to pass along the good news that UM Research Scientist Alicia Aarnio has accepted the George Ellery Hale Postdoctoral Fellowship in Solar and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. The fellowship is jointly supported by CU and the National Solar Observatory, which has recently relocated headquarters to Boulder. Alicia will continue her work on young stars and the solar-stellar connection both theoretically and observationally; this is an exciting opportunity as NSO prepares for the DKIST (Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope) first light.
Congratulations, Alicia!
-John
PS. You can keep up with Alicia’s research at her new home page: http://aliciaaarnio.solar/stellar and email: alicia.aarnio@colorado.edu
Dr. Roettenbacher recently posted our accepted article on KOI-1003, a new spotted, eclipsing RS CVn binary in the Kepler field. This work not only fully solves for the distance and component masses of this binary system but offers an unprecedented opportunity to study starspot evolution in this class of hyperactive magnetic stars.
See preprint here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00721
Using the Michigan InfraRed Combiner (MIRC) on the CHARA Array, Rachael Roettenbacher publishes the first images of magnetic spots on a star other than the Sun.
See our press release for this exciting result which appears in the journal Nature.
Here is a link to Nature (paywall) and here is a nice write-up in Astronomy Now
Rachael Roettenbacher successfully defended her PhD Dissertation “Shifting the Starspot Paradigm through Imaging Magnetic Structures and Evolution” on Friday December 11, 2015.
Congratulations to Rachael for years of hard work!
Our NSF proposal to build a new near-IR combiner MYSTIC was selected by NSF. MYSTIC stands for the Michigan Young STar Imager at CHARA and will focus on making images of T Tauri stars with on-going planet formation. We hope to detect signposts of forming planets directly and debut new observing modes, including measuring polarized light.
Our group is interested in recruiting a new graduate student to work on this project as a thesis. Any postdoctoral researchers wishing to base a Hubble or Sagan Fellowship on this project should contact Professor Monnier.
Using the Michigan Infrared Combiner, researchers at CHARA imaged the exploding blast wave around Nova Del.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=133141&org=NSF&from=news
