Assistant Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Wyoming
Research interests: I study the formation, evolution, and statistics of binary and multiple stars. I incorporate large-scale time-domain surveys such as Gaia, SDSS-APOGEE, OGLE, and TESS to measure the physical properties and statistical correlations for large populations of eclipsing, spectroscopic, astrometric, and visual binaries. Using these large datasets, I identify binaries in short-lived phases of evolution and progenitors of various types of astrophysical transients. To further analyze these rare objects, I obtain follow-up spectra with instruments available at UW's 2.3m Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO) telescope and UW's 1/16th share of the 3.5m Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) telescope at Apache Point Observatory (APO). I also study exoplanets in binaries, including how binary stars sculpt planet formation and affect exoplanet demographics. I was recently awarded a NASA ADAP grant to apply machine-learning techniques to investigate the physical characteristics and binary properties of metal-poor and r-process enhances stars.
Background: I grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado as an amateur astronomer. I completed my undergrad at CU Boulder (Go Buffs!) and Ph.D. at Harvard University. I was an Einstein Fellow at the University of Arizona and continued on as a post-doctoral researcher. I returned to the Rocky Mountains and am now a fourth-year assistant professor at UW.
Current Projects: Measuring the occurrence rate of eclipsing and visual binaries across different environments in our Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud galaxies. Characterizing peculiar eclipsing binaries in the LMC that exhibit strong reflection effects (lead by grad student Megan Frank). Incorporating UV through mid-IR photometry to identify very metal-poor stars and measuring the occurrence rate of their close binary companions (lead by grad student Chase Smith). Developing machine-learning techniques to identify r-process enhanced stars with broadband photometry and low-resolution spectra (led by grad student Srujan Dandu).
ADS publicationsEmail: mmoe2 at uwyo.edu