Hi, I'm Gemma!

Astronomy PhD Student
at the University of Hertfordshire

About Me

Hi! I'm Gemma and I'm a final-year astronomy PhD student at the University of Hertfordshire. My PhD project is called "the exoplanet brown dwarf connection – ultracool companions to Gaia stars", and I've also done some work with the GUCDS team. The main research area that I'm interested in is ultracool dwarfs, but I'm also interested in exoplanets (and always appreciate the pretty pictures of star-forming regions and galaxies!) I graduated from Hertfordshire with my undergraduate MPhys degree in 2022, with 1st Class Honours, and have stayed at Herts to continue my research journey!

Besides astronomy, I love travelling, motorsport, my cat Beyblade and my cars (Toby, Bingo and Sprout). I studied at Oklahoma State University for a year during my undergraduate degree, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to attend conferences in new places!

Current Research

T-Dwarf Companions to Gaia Primary Stars

Finding T-dwarfs in wide binary systems with Gaia-detected stars to build a better picture of the physics of T-dwarfs.

Candidate Halo T-Dwarfs

Looking in the southern skies for potential halo T-dwarfs in the galactic cap regions.

WISE Deep Imaging

Using deep WISE stacks to find new very-late-type brown dwarfs near the detection limit.

My Papers

GUCDS VI: Spectral Types and Properties of 51 Ultracool Dwarfs

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Coming Soon...

Conferences & Talks

UH Lunch Talk

The Imitation Game

Conference Website Slides

UH Lunch Talk

From My Co-Authors

J1250+0455AB an ultracool binary in a hierarchical triple system

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Benchmark brown dwarfs - I. A blue M2 + T5 wide binary and a probable young M4 + [T7 + T8] hierarchical triple

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GUCDS V: the ultracool dwarf companion catalogue

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