Minimal differential lateral acceleration configurations for starshade stationkeeping in exoplanet direct imaging” by Jackson Kulik, Gabe Soto, and Dmitry Savransky has been published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems. You can read the paper open access here. This paper discusses a method to identify parts of the sky which are dynamically easier for a starshade and telescope satellite pair to image.
Congratulations to Grace Genszler on being Selected for the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship
Grace Genszler is a member of the 2022 class of the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program – a summer internship and executive mentorship program inspiring the next generation of commercial spaceflight leaders. The full announcement announcement is available here.
Congratulations to Duan Li on Passing Her A Exam!
Duan Li successfully passed her A exam, marking the entrance into the dissertation phase of her degree program. Duan’s public talk can be seen below.
Random Ramblings on Software Tools
Once in a while, we have a ‘tools’ discussion during group meetings to go over various research-adjacent software tools that can potentially make your life easier. In the latest iteration, we discussed version control with git, structuring portable filesystems with git submodules, paper/bibliography management, and rsync:
Congratulations to Dr. Keithly!
Dean Keithly successfully passed his B exam on Friday 11/19. You can watch a recording of his talk here:
SIOSlab at the Roman Coronagraph Instrument Information Sessions
Several of us presented at the recent Roman Coronagraph Instrument Information Sessions, held virtually on October 26th and 28th. Slides and recordings of all talks are available here.
Also, check out the results of the Coronagraph Science Investigation Team at romancgi.sioslab.com
SIOSlab Contributes to the Decadal Survey
Last week, the National Academies released the Astro2020 decadal survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics: Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s. SIOSlab is proud to have contributed to the survey, alongside many of our colleagues at Cornell.
Congratulations to Corey Spohn on Passing his A Exam!
Corey Spohn successfully passed his A exam, marking the entrance into the dissertation phase of his degree program. His public talk can be seen below.
JGCD Paper Published
“Higher-Order Unscented Estimator” by Zvonimir Stojanovski and Dmitry Savransky has been published in the Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics. It is available here (open access). This paper introduces HOUSE, a new extension of the unscented Kalman (UKF) filter with asymmetric sample points and weights chosen to match third- and fourth-order moments in addition to the mean and covariance. Compared with the conventional UKF and conjugate unscented transform (CUT) filters, HOUSE is shown to be more robust to outliers in the process and measurement noise.
ApJL Paper Published
Our latest paper, Keithly & Savransky, “The Solar System as an Exosystem: Planet Confusion“, is now published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This work explores the idea of what we can learn about observing other planetary systems by thinking about external observers studying our own solar system, and the issues they might run into. The Cornell Chronicle has a great story summarizing the research (also carried at Phys.org).