Hello! You have arrived at the website of Andrew Couperus, me! I am a graduate student in the astronomy PhD program at the Georgia State University Department of Physics and Astronomy. I work with Dr. Todd Henry as part of the RECONS group, investigating the photometric variability and magnetic activity of nearby M dwarf stars.
I lead two projects as a graduate student working with Dr. Todd Henry and RECONS. The first of these efforts is a comprehensive endeavor to investigate stellar cycles in nearby M dwarfs, using more than two decades of data obtained by RECONS. The RECONS volume complete sample consists of 455 M dwarfs within 16.7 pc in the southern sky, with a median coverage of approximately 10 years. My efforts so far have yielded one of the largest existing collections of stellar cycles for fully convective M dwarfs. My second project examines a sample I have constructed of 36 M dwarf binaries with nearly identical components. These ‘twin’ wide binaries are comprised of stars with similar masses, ages, and compositions based on (a) astrometry confirming that they are part of the same, presumably coeval system, and (b) optical/infrared photometry from 0.5-2.2 µm that match within 0.1 mag. Evolutionary models and conventional thinking suggest that such twin stars should evolve co-equally, resulting in similar rotation rates and magnetic activity. However, this has not been rigorously examined for M dwarfs, which host complex and poorly understood magnetic activity. These binaries are being studied with several ongoing observational programs, including spectroscopy, speckle imaging, and long and short duration optical photometry. Early results indicate notable differences in the magnetic activity between components for several systems.
Interests
Fantasy Novels - Favorites include: Kingkiller Chronicles, The Stormlight Archive, Riyria Chronicles
Video Games - Favorites include: Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Don't Starve
Arbitrary passionate rants about random things.