Who Am I? - "I'm an Astronomy Graduate Student at Georgia State University in Atlanta."
What Do I Do? - "I study nearby red stars and how they spin."
Who Do I Work With? - "I am part of the RECONS Team and I work with Dr. Todd Henry."
Where Am I From? - "I'm from India where I finished my high school before coming to the US."
Ph.D. Astronomy • June 2022 - Present
M.S. Physics (Concentration in Astronomy) • August 2020 - May 2022
• Find and measure rotation periods for 3000+ nearby M Dwarfs with TESS
• Monitor all M dwarfs within 25 parsecs with known planets orbiting them.
• Examine 20+ years of RECONS data for stellar activity on these M dwarfs.
• Follow-up observations of M dwarfs using SMARTS 0.9m & 1.5m telescope at CTIO, Chile
B.S. Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics • August 2015 - May 2019
• Studied exoplanet atmospheres using 2.3m telescope at Wyoming Infrared Observatory.
• Performed follow-up observations of transiting exoplanets for KELT-Follow Up Network.
• Helped completely automate a 0.9m telescope at the Red Buttes Observatory.
Data Analyst • July 2019 - July 2020
• Develop and improve telemetry designs and build data flow pipelines.
• Provide predictive analysis tools and data analysis models for employees and customers.
• Establish database management procedures and maintain the integrity of the servers.
Research Assistant • May 2018 - August 2018
• Designed software to mitigate RFI using Spectral Kurtosis.
• Analyzed the effectiveness of the mitigation technique for the 100m telescope.
• Real-time implementation of the software in the backend system of GBO
My skills expand beyond just astronomical tools and include generic skills such as database systems, programming languages as well as web designing tools.
Research Poster from 2018 NRAO Summer REU at the Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, WV
AAS Winter Meeting 2019 at Seattle, WA
Research Poster from 2017 Summer REU at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory in Laramie, WY
AAS Winter Meeting 2018 at Washington, D.C.
• Gies, D.R., Shepard, K.A., Kar, A., & Richardson, N.D. 2025, TESS Light Curve of the Interacting Binary W Serpentis, AJ, 169, 340
• Couperus, A.A., Henry, T.J., Osten, R.A., Jao, W.-C., Vrijmoet, E.H., Kar, A., & Horch, E. 2025, The Solar Neighborhood LII: M Dwarf Twin Binaries—Presumed Identical Twins Appear Fraternal in Variability, Rotation, Hα, and X-Rays, AJ, 169, 41
• Kar, A., Henry, T.J., Couperus, A.A., Vrijmoet, E.H., & Jao, W.-C. 2024, The Solar Neighborhood LI: A Variability Survey of Nearby M Dwarfs with Planets from Months to Decades with TESS and the CTIO/SMARTS 0.9m Telescope, AJ, 167, 196
• Bentz, M.C., Duffee, M., Erfani, D., ... Kar, A. ... et al. 2022, Broad-band Photometric Monitoring of 1226 Golia and 6349 Acapulco, Minor Planet Bulletin, 49, 4, 255-256
• Kasper, D.H., Cole, J.L., Gardner, C.N., ... Kar, A. ... et al. 2019, A Transmission Spectrum of HD 189733b from Multiple Broad-band Filter Observations, MNRAS, 483, 3781
• Collins, K.A., Collins, K.I., Pepper, J., ... Kar, A. ... et al. 2018, The KELT Follow-up Network and Transit False-positive Catalog: Pre-vetted False Positives for TESS, AJ, 156, 234
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