Hello! I am a radio astronomer studying the variable sky.
Welcome to my personal website! I am a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University and a member of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. I am part of the Cosmic Transients Lab advised by Professor Edo Berger. Additionally, I am a supporting member of the Macalester-Augustana-Coe Robotic Observatory (MACRO) Consortium. I completed my undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa where my research was advised by Professor Robert Mutel. Previously, I was a summer intern in the Cosmic Microwave Background Lab in the CfA REU Program where I worked with Professor John Kovac and Dr. Clara Vergès on the BICEP/Keck Array experiment.
In my research, I focus on the lowest energy light on the electromagnetic spectrum, often called radio astronomy or centimeter/millimeter/sub-millimeter astronomy. I use interferometry to combine the signals from multiple radio telescopes to create a virtual telescope the size of the distance between the telescopes. I use radio telescopes like the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) located in Socorro, New Mexico, which has 27 antennas in a Y-shaped configuration. I also observe with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) composed of ten antennas spread across the United States from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands to create the highest resolution images in astronomy using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry. I have worked with the Submillimeter Array located near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii as well, which operates at the highest frequencies of radio astronomy.
Using these telescopes and others, I observe some of the most energetic events in the universe. Currently, I am monitoring several tidal disruption events which occur when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole and is torn apart by the black hole’s gravity. I am also interested in radio observations of other kinds of transient events like supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and fast blue optical transients.
Additionally, I work on understanding the magnetic fields of stars and how they affect stellar evolution, stellar winds, and using them to uncover star-planet interactions. I began work on this topic during my undergraduate research where I observed a suite of radio stars with the VLA at multiple frequencies to determine how their radio emission is produced (ref. Golay et al. 2023). In my second project, I focused in on one binary star system called HR1099, where I used the VLBA to observe at very high resolution. We were able to map how the radio emission follows the binary’s orbit: check out this movie of our observations (ref. Golay et al. 2024). Now, I am focusing on modeling how certain stars produce radio “masers” (like a laser, but with microwaves) and observations of exoplanet-hosting stars to search for radio emission from star-planet interactions.
I am also interested in the automation of small telescopes for undergraduate research and educational use. I am the primary author of the pure-Python package pyscope, which provides a simple interface to control astronomical instrumentation and is built on the ASCOM standard for easy integration with popular, commercially-available hardware. Observatories using pyscope can take advantage of the telrun module for fully-robotic operation. This work is part of the MACRO Consortium which operates a 0.5m PlaneWave CDK telescope at the Winer Observatory in Sonoita, Arizona.
Reseach Interests
- Constraining models of extra-galactic transients by observing their radio emission
- Modeling and observing stellar radio emission, magnetism, and star-exoplanet interactions
- Instrumentation and robotic operation of small optical telescopes for educational use
Contact
Department of Astronomy
Harvard University
60 Garden Street, MS-10
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Office: A103
Email: wgolay@cfa.harvard.edu