Aidan received his B.S. degree in Astronomy from UH Hilo in 2022. While there, he studied astrometric calibration using smartphone screens with Michael Bottom. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Aidan worked as a telescope operator for Subaru Telescope atop Maunakea, assisting with coronagraph design for SCExAO. He hopes to further develop his love for instrumentation while at the IfA.

Outside of astronomy, Aidan likes to spend his free time outdoors – hiking, biking, and rock climbing. He also enjoys working on cars, eating fish, and browsing farmers markets. He looks forward most to receiving a Lifetime National Park Pass in 36 years, when he turns 62.

Ph.D. Topic

Dissertation – Upgrading a Photonic Lantern Spectrograph on Subaru Telescope

Aidan is working with Sebastien Vievard, the Space Science Engineering Initiative (SSEI), and the SCExAO team at Subaru telescope to develop a next generation photonic lantern spectrograph for his dissertation. During his 699-2 project, Aidan pushed data reduction techniques for the current on-sky implementation of FIRST-PL. His dissertation focuses on designing, building, and commissioning a new version of the instrument that increases the spectral resolution from R ~ 3,000 to R ~ 60,000. This work includes building and characterizing the spectrograph in the lab, commissioning it on the telescope, and science observations to demonstrate its performance.

699-2 – Measuring Humu’s Spin Orientation Using FIRST-PL

For his second year project, Aidan worked with Sebastien Vievard to measure stellar spin orientation using a photonic lantern spectrograph. Photonic lanterns are a new generation of photonic devices that are sensitive to both the input scene and wavefront aberrations, enabling them to simultaneously function as wavefront sensors and probe information well below the telescope diffraction limit. Aidan developed spectro-astrometric data reduction techniques to measure the spin orientation of Humu (Altair), which is five times smaller than telescope’s diffraction limit. The resulting measurements achieved a spectro-astrometric precision of ~10 μas in 200 seconds of integration time, among the highest precisions ever demonstrated on a single telescope. This project became the basis for Aidan’s dissertation work.

699-1 – A Very Wide Field Wavefront Sensor

During his first year at the IfA, Aidan worked with Mark Chun to investigate the feasibility of a very wide field wavefront sensor. The goal was to develop a low-cost, easy-to-use device that relies solely on natural guide stars. When paired with the next-generation adaptive secondary mirrors currently under development by Mark Chun, this sensor could enable local correction adaptive optics on small to medium-sized telescopes. The system has the potential to enhance image quality by factors of a few across all existing telescope instruments, offering a practical path to wide field AO for observatories unable to support laser guide stars.