Zoe Parker

Profile

I completed an Integrated Master’s in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Leeds. For my Masters project my supervisors were Professor René Oudmaijer and Dr Maria Koutoulaki. I worked on detecting close companions to young stars, specifically the three intermediate mass Herbig stars R CrA, HD53367 and T Ori. I did this by using infrared interferometry data from the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and its GRAVITY instrument to spatially resolve the systems. This involved applying both 2D geometric modelling to the dust continuum and more complex continuum modelling using the PMOIRED (Mérand (2022)) Python package. Since two of the systems, R CrA and HD53367, had a Bry emission line this was also modelled to analyse what it was tracing. A paper is in preparation presenting these results, including highlighting the first direct detection of an inner companion to T Ori that has not been identified before, making it a quadlet system.

During my Masters, I also completed a 3-month internship UARE at the University of Alberta in Canada in 2023 under the supervision of Professor Craig Heinke. I analysed the globular clusters M2 and M5 to identify X-ray counterparts to sources that were cross matched from Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope data. I categorised sources into cataclysmic variables, active binaries, red super giants, sub subgiants and variable stars using TOPCAT, DS9 and Python.

I am now undertaking my PhD at the University of Leeds researching unusual planetary systems with massive debris disks, under the supervision of Professor Mark Thompson and Dr John Ilee. My work involves studying a sample of 400 candidate debris disks taken from the Herschel-ATLAS (H-ATLAS far-IR galaxy) survey. I do this by using multi-wavelength data (70 micron high resolution images, far-IR and GAIA data to determine the distance to the central host stars within each) to find the most unusual and therefore promising disks for further study with ALMA. The ultimate aim is to understand the origin and physical nature of these debris disks and gain a better understanding of how our own solar system fits into the demographic.

Research interests

I have a particular interest in debris disks and how they influence planet evolution, as well as how learning about the demographics of other systems can help us to understand our own solar system. I am a keen observational astrophysicist that enjoys working with infrared data the most. In the future, I am excited to expand my PhD research by imaging the most interesting subset of my sample using ALMA.

Qualifications

• Master of Phys & Bach of Sc (Physics with Astrophysics, Physics & Astronomy)