i published another science paper

This past month I published another peer reviewed article as first-author, this time in The Astrophysical Journal. The pre-print of the article is currently available on arXiv. In this paper, we used the VLTI/GRAVITY instrument down in Chile to study the orbit and atmosphere of a failed star. This object, HD 72946 B, didn’t form with enough mass to generate the pressure and temperature at its core to fuse hydrogen into helium, and therefore doesn’t have the energy to shine brightly, like stars do. Instead, for the past 2.5 billion years, its slowly been contracting and getting fainter. With our new observations, we measured how massive it is (its about 70 times the mass of Jupiter), which allowed us to investigate what it is made out of. I wrote a bit more about my research using VLTI/GRAVITY on my research page.