Research Interests

Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae

Great Nebula in Orion: C. R. O’Dell, S. K. Wong, NASA

I could hardly call myself a student of Jim Kaler or Don Osterbrock without having cultivated a deep interest in the astrophysics of gaseous nebulae. This area of knowledge is central to the understanding a wide variety of phenomena, from active galaxies to novae, star-forming regions to planetary nebulae (PNe). Analyzing the narrow emission lines from these objects is a powerful means to measure gas density, temperature, and chemical abundances. My accomplishments and active projects in this area include:

• Development of open-source nebular analysis software
• Analysis of systematic errors often found in published nebular abundances
• Validation of common recipes for ionization correction factors (ICFs) using co-spatial UV/Optical/IR spectroscopy
• An ongoing study of PNe in the Galaxy, including an active project on Compact Galactic PNe
• A discovery of fullerenes in PNe
• Extensive studies of PNe in the Magellanic Clouds
• Astrophysics with Large Datasets

The Research pull-down menu provides links to highlights of these projects.

Science Collaborators

One of the great joys of my career is the opportunity to work with many bright, energetic, and capable people in this sub-field. I am particularly indebted to my closest collaborator, Letizia Stanghellini, with whom I have worked for over 20 years. I have also had the pleasure over the past few years of working closely with: Bruce Balick, Reggie Dufour, Dick Henry, Karen Kwitter, Ting-Hui Lee, Arturo Manchado, Quentin Parker, Warren Reid, Armin Rest, and Eva Villaver. I deeply appreciate the support and mentoring of my Ph.D. advisor, James B. Kaler, and my post-Doctoral sponsor, Donald E. Osterbrock. I have of course collaborated and interacted with many other people over the years (see my publication list), and I am grateful to them all for their association, and for the many things I have learned from them.