Dr. Kimberly Sokal

The IGRINS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin

IGRINS - Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrogram

IGRINS is an near-infrared instrument that obtains spectra with high spectral resolving power (R=45,000) over a broad wavelength range (the entire H and K bands together). The silicon immersion echelle grating, developed at UT by the Jaffe group, enables both those features simultaneously while remaining compact, highly efficient, and transportable. To read more about this revolutionary instrument, see our instrument page

A view of IGRINS (right gold box) hanging on the back of the telescope, along with its electronics rack (left silver box).

Installing foreoptics onto IGRINS, which will adjust the incoming magnification to what IGRINS expects.

CV

My Science with IGRINS

Using High Resolution Near-IR Spectra to Learn about Young Stellar Objects (YSOs)

Here is just a snippet of IGRINS spectra (including the well known Na interval, the entire spectra goes from 1.45um to 2.5 um!) of a famous YSO TW Hya compared to different model fits of different effective temperatures (Sokal et al., 2018, ApJ, 853, 120 ).

Using an IGRINS survey of YSOs, I am assessing the relationship between classifications and their evolution. For instance, how long does a disk really last? Are Class II stars actually the precursors to Class III stars? I aim to nail down the stellar parameters by fitting MoogStokes synthetic spectra, which models emergent spectra of stars and includes effects due to magnetic fields. Stay tuned to find out what we learn!

To see more science being done with IGRINS, click on The IGRINS Science Page

Link to my ADS