Sometimes I end up in spaces I have no business being in. Including on a stage at the museum with actual NASA scientists while I yap about why planets are cool.

We're back at Keck for our second night of observing for our KPF program. This time, I was joined by Young Worlds undergrads, Isabel and Leah, and UniSQ graduate student, Sydney Vach. We spent some time exploring and even got to hike at Volcano National Park.

My Keck proposal was awarded telescope time, and I got to go to Hawaii to observe at headquarters! We observed [redacted] looking for [redacted] ;) These were long travel days (two 5.5 hour flights!) but a very cool experience.

I gave the talk about IRAS 01425+2902 b and met some more of our collaborators. It was fun seeing MIT and Boston! I even made it to the aquarium :)

I was fortunate enough to attend TWO international conferneces this summer! Exoplanets V in Leiden, Netherlands and Challenge Accepted at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany! I had a poster in Leiden and my first big-kid talk in Heidelberg. This was the first time I talked openly about our recent discovery of the 3 Myr planet. It was super exciting seeing everyone's excitement for it (and a bit of sadness that the paper wasn't going to be out for a while). Between the conferences, I spent two weeks exploring the Netherlands and Germany! It was a great opportunity that I didn't think I would be able to have.

Another poster! I was awarded a research fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year through NASA's NC Space Grant program. We had a poster session, where I gave a sneak peak at the new planet we were working on! This was before we submittted the paper, so everything was quite vague. The symposium had a mix of astronomy disciplines.

I attended my first in-person confernece! This was the Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science Symposium (ERES) at Penn State. I presented a poster on the paper I wrote as a Senior Undergrad and met a lot of our collaborators I had never met in person.

I think airports are really neat places. Or maybe my layovers have just been too long. Either way, airports have some real gems.