Katherine Alatalo

UC - Berkeley Department of Astronomy
727A Campbell Hall
kalatalo{at}astro.berkeley.edu



About Me

I am currently in my second year in the UC - Berkeley Astrophysics Ph.D. program.  I grew up in Plymouth, MI, attending Plymouth-Canton High School where I graduated in 2001. I then attended the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) where I graduated with a dual degree in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics in 2004.   also successfully finished the Master's program for an M.A. in Astronomy in Fall 2007.

In my free time, I like to bicycle, run, read, watch movies, watch sports, take photographs, explore San Francisco and Oakland, and visit New York.  I also volunteer for the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.





Research Interests

While at the University of Michigan, I worked on two research projects.  The first was looking for evidence that Omega Centauri was a captured dwarf galaxy in the form of a stream of stars between it and the Milky Way. My second research project at the University of Michigan was developing image subtraction software to find supernovae in the ROTSE Sky Patrol data.  This then made way to analyze the data coming out of the ROTSE telescopes when they took images of a gamma-ray burst.  Due to my analysis of these GRBs, I am co-author on several publications out of the group, including some which I was an integral part of writing.

Now that I am at Berkeley, I have also worked on two projects, including my current one. Firstly, I continued in the field of gamma-ray bursts, using a telescope called PAIRITEL, which is one under the control of Prof. Josh Bloom. I used the J,H, &K filters to quickly follow up GRBs, but also to search for GRBs at z > 10.

I am now working with Prof. Leo Blitz on several projects, mainly using the CARMA instrument in Cedar Flat, CA.  I have just started working for him, but am currently doing a project to detect and map high redshift star formation using the CO spectral line.

I am also using the CARMA instrument to increase the spectral information we have on pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) with Prof. Jon Arons.

Click the provided link to view papers on ADS.




Fellowships