Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: The explosive origins of heavy elements: systematic searches for r-process sites with WINTER

Danielle Frostig is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Frostig will conduct a series of near-infrared surveys to study a suite of potential origin sites of heavy elements formed in r-process synthesis, including neutron star mergers, gamma-ray burst afterglows, and exotic supernovae.

For the education component of this project, Frostig will run a telescope design and build course at a local high school maker space and develop accompanying online curriculum to teach students hands-on skills in STEM.

This project employs a new robotic infrared survey telescope developed in part by Frostig as part of her PhD thesis. Using near-infrared time-domain surveys of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, Frostig will study intrinsically reddened transients and variables to shed light on dusty environments and sites of r-process elemental synthesis. This project will help prepare for and complement the upcoming time-domain surveys from the Vera C.

Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope by building up a long baseline catalog of near-infrared transients and variables and providing some overlapping coverage. Frostig will also work on designing future near-infrared instrumentation for follow-up spectroscopic characterization of sources. This project advances the goals of the NSF Windows on the Universe Big Idea.

This research award is partially funded by a generous gift from Charles Simonyi to the NSF Astronomy division. The project includes significant contributions to Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.