![[Gravitational lens image]](images/ms0440small.gif)
One of my areas of research is observational
cosmology using gravitational lenses. A preprint of my latest Astrophysical
Journal paper is now available!
One of my areas of research is observational
cosmology using gravitational lenses. A preprint of my latest Astrophysical
Journal paper is now available!
This picture is a lens of the sort that I am interested in. (You can find a nicer picture in the Gioia, et al. ApJ paper about this cluster.) What makes this system interesting is the presence of multiple arcs. (They are particularly prominent toward the bottom center of the image.) This suggests the possibility that sources at several different redshifts may have been lensed by this system. That means there is the possibility of extracting information about cosmology from the system.
![[Protostar Image]](images/rhoc-3.jpg)
I also work on computational fluid dynamic
simulations of protostellar disks. We study angular momentum
transport by instabilities caused by gravitational torques in these
disks. Among other things we try to determine whether those
instabilities could cause the disk to fragment or form condensations,
possibly forming binary stars or planetary systems.
The figure shows the results of one of our protostellar disk simulations. The blue surface is an isodensity surface at 10^-6 central density; the red surface is at 10^-2 central.