Toni Panzera
Graduate Student
I am a first-year graduate student at Rice University in Houston, TX originally from Johannesburg, South Africa. I am completing my PhD in Astrophysics. I was a double Mathematics and Physics undergraduate at the University of Denver in Colorado. I am passionate about astro research (obviously) but also about teaching and outreach!
Research Interests
I am primarily interested in stellar astronomy. My past experience is largely in polarimetry of massive stars, but I am also interested in polarimetry applications to other areas such as exoplanets, as well as supernovae. Now in graduate school, I have shifted to focus more on young stellar objects, with specific emphasis on their magnetic activity and ability to host exoplanets. During my undergraduate career, I was involved in two distinct projects.
At the University of Denver, under the guidance of PI Prof. Jennifer Hoffman, I studied the spectropolarimetry of Wolf-Rayet binary stars. These binaries exhibit high stellar winds, which form a shock region in between the two members. Spectropolarimetry helps to probe these winds, so that we may understand the geometry of these systems and their potential to be supernovae progenitors. We obtain data from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), located in Sutherland, South Africa.
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Through the Chalmers Astrophysics and Space Science Summer (CASSUM) Programme, I am also studying the dusty outflow of the low-mass AGB star R Doradus. We obtained polarimetry data for this target using SPHERE/ZIMPOL on the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Stars on the AGB are responsible for the emission of large amounts of dust and gas into the interstellar medium, and are the precursors to planetary nebulae.