Me on Mount Hamilton just after it snowed. I didn’t get any
data that night.
My graduate thesis is on the abundance of r-process elements in the stars of the Milky Way. I use high-resolution spectra of nearby bright stars to measure specific elements like europium. I use Spectroscopy Made Easy, or SME, a least-squares optimization fitting routine in IDL, to do my abundance analysis. Since r-process elements form in core-collapse supernovae, their abundance in stars lends insight into the history of Galaxy enrichment. I expect to complete my dissertation in May 2009.
I work with Professor Geoff Marcy, with lots of help from Professor Debra Fischer. I spend about one night a month observing with the Coudé Auxiliary Telescope at Lick Observatory, and several nights a semester observing on Keck I on Mauna Kea in Hawaii as a member of the UC Berkeley radial velocity planet search. I enjoy observing because each night it presents a unique time- and space-optimization problem to solve: collecting quality data on the targets you want before the sun rises.
Refereed Publications
Peek, Kathryn M. G..
“A New Technique for Determining Europium Abundances in Solar-Metallicity Stars”
2009, Pub. of the Astron. Soc. of the Pacific, accepted. [ PDF ]
Peek, Kathryn M. G., John Asher Johnson, Debra A. Fischer, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Gregory W. Henry, Andrew W. Howard, Jason T. Wright, Thomas B. Lowe, Sabine Reffert, Christian Schwab, Peter K. G. Williams, Howard Isaacson, Matthew J. Giguere.
“Old, Rich, and Eccentric: Two Jovian Planets Orbiting Evolved Metal-Rich Stars”
2009, Pub. of the Astron. Soc. of the Pacific, accepted. [ PDF ]
Thom, C., J. E. G. Peek, M. E. Putman, C. Heiles, K. M. G. Peek, and R. Wilhelm.
“An Accurate Distance to High-Velocity Cloud Complex C.”
2008, Astrophys. Journ., 684, 364. [ PDF ]
Fischer, Debra A., Geoffrey W. Marcy, R. Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt, Greg Laughlin, Gregory W. Henry, David Abouav, Kathryn M. G. Peek, Jason T. Wright, John A. Johnson, Chris McCarthy, and Howard Issacson.
“Five Planets Orbiting 55 Cancri.”
2008, Astrophys. Journ., 675, 790–801. [ PDF ]
Johnson, John Asher, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Debra A. Fischer, Jason T. Wright, Sabine Reffert, Julia M. Kregenow, Peter K. G. Williams, and Kathryn M. G. Peek.
“Retired A Stars and Their Companions. II. Jovian planets orbiting κ CrB and HD 167042.”
2008, Astrophys. Journ., 675, 784–789. [ PDF ]
Johnson, John Asher, R. Paul Butler, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Debra A. Fischer, Steven S. Vogt, Jason T. Wright, and Kathryn M. G. Peek.
“A New Planet around an M Dwarf: Revealing a Correlation between Exoplanets and Stellar Mass.”
2007, Astrophys. Journ., 670, 833–840. [ PDF ]
Winn, Joshua N., John Asher Johnson, Kathryn M. G. Peek, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Gaspar Á. Bakos, Keigo Enya, Norio Narita, Yasushi Suto, Edwin L. Turner, and Steven S. Vogt.
“Spin-Orbit Alignment for the Eccentric Exoplanet HD 147506b.”
2007, Astrophys. Journ., 665, L167–L170. [ PDF ]
Selected Conference Contributions
Peek, Kathryn M. G. and Geoffrey W. Marcy. “r-Process Elements in the Milky Way.”
American Astronomical Society 211th Meeting, Austin, Texas, January 2008.
Peek, Kathryn M. G., Geoffrey W. Marcy, and Christopher Sneden. “r-Process Abundances in the Galaxy.”
Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Disks, Rome, Italy, October 2007.
Peek, Kathryn M. G. and Geoffrey W. Marcy. “The Heaviest Elements: r-Process Abundances in the Galaxy.”
American Astronomical Society 210th Meeting, Honolulu, Hawai’i, May 2007.
Image of HD 120636 taken from MAST DSS.