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.
What is Betelgeuse doing?
Everyone's favourite supernova progenitor started fading dramatically in November 2019 and is now less than half as bright as it was. Here is a plot of its last 5 years of observations, from the AAVSO:
It looks like it has just begun to brighten again as of late February. I would like there to be a galactic supernova in my lifetime (the last one was in 1604) so I'm rooting for it to explode as soon as possible.
Research
My most recent 5 publications:
- January 2020: {\sc precision}: A fast python pipeline for high-contrast imaging -- application to SPHERE observations of the red supergiant VX Sagitariae
Scicluna, P., Kemper, F., Siebenmorgen, R., Wesson, R., Blommaert, J. A. D. L., Wolf, S. - January 2020: IGAPS: the merged IPHAS and UVEX optical surveys of theNorthern Galactic Plane
Monguió, M., Greimel, R., Drew, J. E., Barentsen, G., Groot, P. J., Irwin, M. J., Casares, J., Gänsicke, B. T., et al. - November 2019: The missing mass conundrum of post-common-envelope planetary nebulae
Santander-García, Miguel, Jones, David, Alcolea, Javier, Wesson, Roger, Bujarrabal, Valentín - November 2019: Observing the mass-loss of nearby red supergiants through high-contrast imaging
Scicluna, Peter, Siebenmorgen, R., Blommaert, J. A. D. L., Kemper, F., Wesson, R., Wolf, S. - November 2019: Characterization of the planetary nebula Tc 1 based on VLT X-shooter observations
Aleman, Isabel, Leal-Ferreira, Marcelo L., Cami, Jan, Akras, Stavros, Ochsendorf, Bram, Wesson, Roger, Morisset, Christophe, Cox, Nick L. J., et al.
See the full list of 135 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.
