Astronomer. Stargazer. Kiwi.

Looking mysterious... Kia Ora - I am a recently-minted post-doctoral researcher at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra. My work involves finding and characterising the youngest stars in the Sun's (and therefore our own) neighbourhood. By studying these interesting stars we can hope to understand:


January 2012 — Thesis accepted!
After a long, relaxing holiday in NZ and San Francisco (and applying for jobs), my thesis was unconditionally accepted in late-January. A hard copy is safely ensconced in the ANU library, but you can read the full, enhanced PDF version here. No rest for me — time to apply for more jobs!


September 2011, as seen in Science!
New paper: 'The Solar Neighborhood. XXVI. AP Col: The Closest (8.4 pc) Pre-main-sequence Star' accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. The title says it all!

Read about it here, here, or download a PDF of the paper.


February 2011, new paper! Things that go bump in the night: 'Episodic disc accretion in the halo of the `old' pre-main-sequence cluster Eta Chamaeleontis' published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Letters.

Download a PDF of the paper.


Artist's impression of a planet orbiting the M4.5 star GJ1214 (Credit: David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)



Header photo credits: Left: The most beautiful place in the world, the South Island of New Zealand. Christchurch (or what's left of it) is underneath the tuft of cloud to the North of Banks Peninsula. Middle: Open cluster M7 in Scoripus. Right: M16, the Eagle Nebula from HST, where stars are being formed as you read this.