About me

As with many astronomers, I got my introduction to the field at an early age looking through a modest reflecting telesope at Saturn and it's rings from my backyard in rural Pennsylvania. I was hooked, and practiced amateur astronomy for years afterward. I was pretty invested in observational astronomy at that point, and planned my following education accordingly.

I did my undergraduate in physics at Alfred University, a small university in the southern tier of New York State. I also picked up a major in mathematics and minors in astronomy and political science on the way. I was convinced to attend Alfred by its fairly outsized astronomical facility, Stull Observatory, which houses several impressive telescopes (a manual one with a 20" primary, and 3 robots with 16", 24", and 32" primaries). During my time there I got plenty of hands on experience working the observatory, acting as teaching assistant for introductory labs, hosting open houses, and conducting research.

The primary research project I undertook at Stull Observatory was the observation of exoplanet transits. This turned out to be quite the endeavor, because Stull Observatory was always at the mercy of the New York winter when we were collecting data. My research comrade, Bradley Keough and I probably put 15-20 nights into that project, successfully observing transits on a whopping two of them. The rest of the nights were spent clouded, snowed, or winded out, often in the middle of what would've been a great transit. Thankfully we had no competition for telescope time. In gathering that data I became intimately familiar with Maxim DL6 as a capture program and AstroImageJ for data reduction and image calibration, skills I still find useful.

I no longer do that sort of active observational astronomy here in Rochester, but I do still enjoy nonscience oriented visual astronomy. I've become more interested in astrophotography over the years, particularly planetary images (it's the most budget friendly avenue). You can see some of my images on the astrophotography page. I'm also invested in doing outreach and getting the public interested in astronomy - after all it's their tax dollars that fund most of our science. I'm currently the Vice President of RIT's astronomy club, and enjoy the role and the community engagement it provides, especially on observing nights.