I'm an Astronomer at Harvard working on the TESS Science Team and with the Origins of Life Collaboration. I search for and study planets outside our solar system - to study planetary formation, architecture, and habitability.
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Outside of planetary research, I also study self-lensing binaries with white dwarf companions to investigate white-dwarf structure models and hope to find new self-lensing binaries in TESS data.
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To read more about my research interests and experience, see my research page!
I'm an Astronomer at Harvard working on the TESS Science Team and with the Origins of Life Collaboration. I search for and study planets outside our solar system - to study planetary formation, architecture, and habitability.
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Outside of planetary research, I also study self-lensing binaries with white dwarf companions to investigate white-dwarf structure models and hope to find new self-lensing binaries in TESS data.
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To read more about my research interests and experience, see my research page!
As an undergraduate at MIT, I led an investigation into the micro-lensing of the first discovered, strongly lensed type Ia supernova, iPTF16geu. This system cause commotion when it was discovered, as its standard candle nature plus time delay values, could theoretically lead to a constraint of the Hubble parameter. However, the macro-models published by More et al. 2017 showed significant flux ratio anomolies with the observations of the four images. I constructed a Monte-Carlo simulation, in Python, which showed that the likelihood for micro-lensing to cause these flux ratio anomalies between observations and macro-models was ~3/1000. I then showed that even if the macro-models fit perfectly, the microlensing probability density functions create a probability distribution on the intrinsic brightness with a full width half maximum of 0.73 magnitudes. As such, the error for the standard candle brightness is quite large. This reduces the utility of the standard candle nature of type Ia supernovae. This project led to a first author paper, and cover article, in the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal Fall 2017, which has 10 academic citations (as of November 2019). I then built on this work, leading three other micro-lensing projects that took advantage of the code that I had generated, culminating in my senior thesis, entitled “Statistical Analyses of Gravitational Microlensing Probability Densities.”
As an undergraduate at MIT, I led an investigation into the micro-lensing of the first discovered, strongly lensed type Ia supernova, iPTF16geu. This system cause commotion when it was discovered, as its standard candle nature plus time delay values, could theoretically lead to a constraint of the Hubble parameter. However, the macro-models published by More et al. 2017 showed significant flux ratio anomolies with the observations of the four images. I constructed a Monte-Carlo simulation, in Python, which showed that the likelihood for micro-lensing to cause these flux ratio anomalies between observations and macro-models was ~3/1000. I then showed that even if the macro-models fit perfectly, the microlensing probability density functions create a probability distribution on the intrinsic brightness with a full width half maximum of 0.73 magnitudes. As such, the error for the standard candle brightness is quite large. This reduces the utility of the standard candle nature of type Ia supernovae. This project led to a first author paper, and cover article, in the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal Fall 2017, which has 10 academic citations (as of November 2019). I then built on this work, leading three other micro-lensing projects that took advantage of the code that I had generated, culminating in my senior thesis, entitled “Statistical Analyses of Gravitational Microlensing Probability Densities.”
TRES on the 1.5m Tillinghast at FLWO on Mt. Hopkins, AZ. Picture was taken during an observing run on TRES in November 2019.
Daniel A. Yahalomi
I am a second year PhD student in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Columbia University. Previously, I worked as an Astronomer at the Harvard CfA on the TESS Science Team and with the Origins of Life Collaboration. I completed my undergraduate degree at MIT in Physics with minors in Computer Science and Comparative Media Studies in 2018.
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I search for and study planets outside our solar system - to study planetary formation, architecture, and habitability. Outside of planetary research, I am also interested in characterizing self-lensing binaries with white-dwarf companions to investigate white-dwarf structure models. I hope to search for and find new self-lensing binaries with TESS.
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To read more about my research interests and experience, see my research page!
GitHub: dyahalomi
CV:
Exoplanets IV Poster:
SRMP students building galileoscopes in October, 2019.
Early mentorship and support from teachers and professors gave me the confidence to pursue a career in astronomy. I really enjoyed working with and mentoring high school students.
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Two of the main outreach projects I work on are the Harvard Observing Project as an observer and the Harvard-MIT Science Research Mentorship Program (SRMP) as the Head of Observing .
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To read more about my outreach work, see my outreach page!