About
I'm Roger Wesson, an astronomer working at University College London, where I carry out research on evolved stars and their outflows as part of the sndust group. Previously I spent four years in Chile, where I was a Fellow at the European Southern Observatory and spent 80 nights a year supporting operations at the Very Large Telescope, including nighttime support on UT3 (Melipal). Before that I was at UCL, where I was an undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoc. These pages contain information about my research.
Research
My most recent 5 publications:
- March 2021: Towards a more complete sample of binary central stars of planetary nebulae with Gaia
Chornay, N., Walton, N. A., Jones, D., Boffin, H. M. J., Rejkuba, M., Wesson, R. - February 2021: Planetary nebula NGC 6302 - a testbed for dust formation and processing in a dense torus irradiated by harsh UV radiation
Matsuura, Mikako, Aleman, Isabel, Barlow, Michael J., Bernard-Salas, Jeronimo, Blommaert, Joris A. D. L., Dinerstein, Harriet L., Hirano, Naomi, Jones, Olivia, et al. - February 2021: The Ring Nebula as a laboratory for the interaction of molecules, PAHs and dust in strong UV radiation fields
Barlow, Michael J., Cox, Nick, Aleman, Isabel, Bernard-Salas, Jeronimo, Cami, Jan, Dinerstein, Harriet L., Justtanont, Kay, Manchado, Arturo, et al. - February 2021: H α fluxes and extinction distances for planetary nebulae in the IPHAS survey of the northern galactic plane
Dharmawardena, Thavisha E., Barlow, M. J., Drew, J. E., Seales, A., Sale, S. E., Jones, D., Mampaso, A., Parker, Q. A., et al. - February 2021: Shocks and expanding ejecta in Supernova 1987A
Matsuura, Mikako, Arendt, Richard G., Dwek, Eli, Fransson, Claes, Larsson, Josefin, Alp, Dennis, Barlow, Michael J., Bouchet, Patrice, et al.
See the full list of 150 papers on my publications page, research highlights on my research page, and where in the sky I've been looking on my sky map page
Codes
Some of the codes I've written:
- alfa - automated line fitting algorithm
- neat - nebular empirical analysis tool
- astro-ph sorter - list up to 30 days of astro-ph abstracts, sorted according to your research interests
- observability.date - visibility plotting tool for observation planning
See more on my codes page.
Photography
I do a lot of astrophotography when I find myself in places with dark skies, and I am an ESO photo ambassador. More details on my photography page.
