Research

Instrumentation

I started working in astronomical instrumentation as an undergraduate physics major at Texas A&M University (WHOOP!). I worked with Professors Darren DePoy and Jennifer Marshall in the Texas A&M Instrumentation Lab from May 2011- July 2012. I worked on the VIRUS collimator alignment for the HETDEX survey, helped install the flat-field screen for the Blanco 4-m telescope for DECal for the Dark Energy Survey Camera, and completed a senior thesis project on an optical design of a red-sensitive spectrograph.

I’ve worked in the UCLA Infrared Lab since September 2012, with Prof. Ian McLean and Prof. Mike Fitzgerald. Currently, I am working on upgrading the NIRSPEC instrument for the Keck II Telescope. My roles include optical design, mechanical prototyping and testing, detector characterization and testing, and electronics.

Me with NIRSPEC (left) and the laser comb (right) in the dome of Keck II on the summit of Mauna Kea in December 2014. We used NIRSPEC to test out a frequency laser comb that could be used for very stable wavelength calibration in the future!

Low-mass stars and brown dwarfs

I work under Prof. Ian McLean studying low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. In 2016, I spent 6 months as an IPAC Visiting Graduate Student Fellow working with Drs. Davy Kirkpatrick and Chas Beichman.

Infrared Spectroscopy

surface gravity examples in L dwarfs — J-band spectra of three L3 type brown dwarfs with low, intermediate, and high gravity. The potassium and iron hydride are used to trace surface gravity in brown dwarf atmospheres.

I studied surface gravities of brown dwarfs using gravity-sensitive features in the J-band spectra of brown dwarfs. I measured neutral potassium and iron hydride absorption to characterize surface gravity, in order to disentangle the effects of mass, temperature, and age on these brown dwarf spectra. Our paper was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal, and on the arxiv: Surface Gravities for 228 M, L, and T Dwarfs in the NIRSPEC Brown Dwarf Spectroscopic Survey

Astrometry

WISE0410+1502 parallactic ellipse — Parallactic Ellipse of WISE 0410+1502 (preliminary result from Spring 2017)

I’m currently working on the Spitzer Parallax Program (PI: Kirkpatrick), in which we are measuring distances to the coldest brown dwarfs in the Solar Neighborhood. We use Spitzer IRAC channel 2 images over baselines of >2 years to measure the motions of these cool objects.

Refereed Publications:

E.C. Martin, G. N. Mace, I. S. McLean, et al., Surface Gravities for 228 M, L, and T Dwarfs in the NIRSPEC Brown Dwarf Spectroscopic Survey, 2017, ApJ, 838, 73, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa6338

J.D. Kirkpatrick, K. Kellogg, A. C. Schneider, et al. (including E. C. Martin), The AllWISE Motion Survey, Part 2, 2016, ApJS, 224, 36, doi:10.3847/0067-0049/224/2/36

X. Yi, K. Vahala, J. Li, et al. (including E. C. Martin), Demonstration of a Near-IR Line-Referenced Electro-Optical Laser Frequency Comb for Precision Radial Velocity Measurements in Astronomy, 2016, Nature Communications, 7, 10436, doi:10.1038/ncomms10436

SPIE Publications:

E.C. Martin, D. L. DePoy, J.L. Marshall, Optical design of a red-sensitive spectrograph, 2012, Proc. SPIE, 8446, 2U, doi:10.1117/12.926281

J.P. Rheault, D.L. DePoy, J.L. Marshall, et al. (including E. C. Martin), Spectrophotometric calibration system for DECam, 2012, Proc. SPIE, 8446, 6M, doi:10.1117/12.924774

T. Prochaska, R.D. Allen, E. Boster, et al. (including E. C. Martin), VIRUS spectrograph assembly and alignment procedures, 2012, Proc. SPIE, 8446, 51, doi:10.1117/12.925487

E.C.Martin, M.P. Fitzgerald, I. S. McLean, et al., Performance modeling of an upgraded NIRSPEC on Keck, 2014, Proc. SPIE, 9147, 81, doi:10.1117/12.2056896

J. L. Marshall, D. L. DePoy, T. Prochaska, et al. (including E. C. Martin), VIRUS Instrument Collimator Assembly, 2014, Proc. SPIE, 9147, 3S, doi:10.1117/12.2056757

E. C. Martin, M.P. Fitzgerald, I. S. McLean, et al., Optical design of the slit-viewing camera for the NIRSPEC upgrade, 2016, Proc. SPIE, 9908, 2R, doi:10.1117/12.2233767