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Come Clean - Hilary Duff

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First Year

About a week ago, I finished my first year as a professor and it was extremely challenging. I feel mentally and physically exhausted. I thought I had picked the wrong job for a second.

This Spring I taught intro to observational astronomy where the students learn how to use telescopes and reduce astronomical data from scratch. I tried my best to make it as straightforward as possible so they understand how the telescope, atmosphere, and the instrument all impact the response they see on a detector when taking pictures. They pick a project at the beginning of the semester, execute it at the telescope, reduce the data then write up their interpretation of the data. They did so well and I'm proud of them.

My grandfather passed away a month before Spring break and there has been a hole in my heart ever since. I miss him a lot and I essentially had to pretend everything was okay for the rest of the semester. He had dementia and I would give anything to hear his laugh again. Around November I saw him for the last time. I was lucky he had energy to speak to me for hours that day. I played some Marvin Gaye and Bobby Blue Bland for him.

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Rebekah did so well at the AZ NASA Space Grant Symposium today. I'm so proud of the work she has done over the program.

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Jwst metrology dewar

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After giving colloquia at Wesleyan and the University of Michigan, I took some time to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. The museum is the site of the first Motown headquarters and recording studio. It was such a pleasure to see an important piece of Black history.

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Images of the Milky Way's galactic center in the mid-infrared.

Left: Image from Becklin and Neugebaur 1975

Right: Image from Dinh+ 2024

Despite not knowing alot about galaxies, I was absolutely blown away by all of the defined structure in the image on the right. During department tea time this week some colleagues were talking about their favorite papers that are older than themselves. I went back to my personal favorite, Infrared Observations of the Galactic Center (Becklin+ 1968) and checked out similar papers from the time. I came across a very old image of the inner parsec region shown on the right.

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Top: Cathedral of St. Augustine

Bottom: Piece from Juan Obando and Yoshua Okón: DEMO

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The Importance of Deuterium

Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one extra proton. The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) is an indicator of mass in isolated substellar objects. Brown dwarfs that have more than 12 times the mass of Jupiter are theoretically warm enough to fuse deuterium, causing smaller atmospheric D/H ratios. In Solar System objects the D/H ratio can be altered by temperature, material transport, or atmospheric escape. In Rowland+ 2024 (accepted ApJL), we were able to detect deuterium for the first time outside of our solar system in WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf.

The overall D/H ratio is inferred by detecting both deuterated methane (CH3D) and normal methane (CH4) in the atmosphere of WISE 0855. From the data we also estimate that WISE 0855 has two times more mass than Jupiter. Both the deueterium abundance and mass are consistent with theoretical expectations. Deuterium is not exclusive to gravitationally bound companions and can be used to infer mass in both brown dwarfs and exoplanets. I was super excited to be apart of this paper and also previous work demonstrating we could detect CH3D is most cold brown dwarfs.

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Last week I attended the joint meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists and National Society of Hispanic Physicists in Houston, Texas. I enjoyed seeing friendly colleagues and meeting new researchers. It was an honor to give an invited talk in the astronomy session and I'm happy I could convey the importance of brown dwarfs to folks outside of my subfield.

The first photo is everyone from the University of Arizona (minus Carlos Vargas) who attended. Graduate students Jasmin Washington (Steward Observatory, center) and Kiana McFadden (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, left) presented their work as well. I had fun walking around an exploring downtown Houston in the evenings. I absolutely adored the POST, which had an open plan plant store with a stage for jazz.