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JEN WINTERS, PhD Member, RECONS Postdoctoral Fellow Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 60 Garden Str., P351 Cambridge, MA 02138 email: jennifer.winters (at) cfa (dot) harvard (dot) edu |  |
Curriculum Vitae (updated February 16, 2016)
REDDOT - My Dissertation Project
REDDOT is a project to determine the stellar multiplicity of nearby M Dwarfs. Our all-sky sample consists of all M Dwarfs having an accurate published parallax that places them within 25 parsecs (81.5 light years) of the Sun. We define M Dwarfs as those stars having 8.8 < M_V < 20.0, as well as having a 3.7 < (V-K) < 9.5, corresponding to masses 0.67 - 0.075 times the mass of our Sun. We are probing the environs of ~1100 stars using two different search methodologies: 1) I-band imaging for companions at 1-5 arcsec separations, and 2) a blinking search using SuperCOSMOS plates in conjunction with the I-band images noted above for common proper motion companions at separations 4 - 600 arcsec. Follow-up observations of candidates are being done with DSSI (the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument).
The results will allow us to understand the relationships between stellar multiplicity, mass, and metallicity (elements in stars other than hydrogen and helium) because the large sample will, for the first time, permit rigorous statistical investigations of the nearby red dwarf population. Ultimately, we will reveal the kinds of stellar families that exist in our Galaxy and will be able to make informed predictions about where exoplanets may be likely to exist among the nearest stars.
This is the largest, most comprehensive study ever done of the multiplicity of the most common type of stars in our Galaxy.
Dissertation (posted January 30, 2016)
RECONS: REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars
RECONS formed in 1994 with the intent of understanding the nature of the Sun's nearest stellar neighbors, both individually and as a population. The projects described below are all associated with the overall RECONS effort. Our goals are to discover ``missing'' members of the sample of stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years) and to characterize all stars within that distance limit. New members are found via astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic techniques, or through companionship studies at small and large separations. Characterization includes photometry and spectroscopy at both optical and infrared wavelengths, as well as determinations of the luminosity function, mass function, and multiplicity fraction of the nearby stars.
CTIOPI: Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory Parallax Investigation
The CTIOPI Team is on the hunt to discover nearby white, red, and brown dwarfs that lurk unidentified in the solar neighborhood. Our goal is to discover 150 new nearby southern star systems by determining trigonometric parallaxes accurate to 3 milliarcseconds. Since 1999, we have used the 0.9m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, located in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, to measure the distances to potential nearby stars. CTIOPI started under the auspices of the NOAO Surveys Program and continues via the SMARTS Consortium. Through accurate trigonometric parallax measurements, we hope to increase the population of stars known within 25 pc of the Sun by 20% in the southern sky.
SMARTS: Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System
On 01 February 2003, SMARTS took over responsibility for operation of four telescopes at CTIO. These telescopes include the CTIO 1.5m, CTIO 1.3m (formerly the 2MASS telescope), the Yale 1.0m, and the CTIO 0.9m. Long-term partners in SMARTS include the Association of Universities for Research in Astonomy (NOAO in Tucson, AZ and La Serena, Chile), Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA), Ohio State University (Columbus, OH), State University of New York (Stony Brook, NY), and Yale University (New Haven, CT).
First Author Publications
Greenwich, UK | Atlanta, GA | Santiago, CHILE | Flagstaff, AZ |
last updated 28 January 2016