Astronomy

My background is in radio astronomy. I earned a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics for my research on radio pulsars. The name pulsar alludes to the pulsed nature of their radio emissions. My PhD project contained both aspects of physics as well as technical aspects that come with radio observations and their analysis.

Pulsars are neutron stars, stars whose properties are so extreme they cannot be re-created in a laboratory. Neutron stars, for example, are just below the density at which matter collapses to form a black hole. Studying the way a neutron star's environment affects the pulsed radiation also allows us to study the properties of that environment. Of particular interest are pulsars that orbit another star or compact object (white dwarf, neutron star or black hole).

The main radio telescope I used for my research is the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). This telescope is distributed across Western Europe and centered on the Dutch province of Drenthe. The telescope comprises of many simple antennas whose signals are digitized and combined in various ways to act as one large telescope, many small ones, or both at the same time. The observing modes of LOFAR can be defined in software making it very flexible.

I worked on the first two pulsars surveys with the LOFAR radio telescope. For these surveys I built data reduction pipelines, processed the data, and performed analysis of the data. I discovered two previously unknown pulsars J0140+5621 and J0613+3731.