Adam Moss

Postdoctoral Associate | University of Florida

I am an observational astronomer with a general interest in all things stellar. My research has been focused on white dwarfs, specifically analyzing the occurence of magnetism within these dead stars. Multiple channels contribute to the origin of magnetic fields, namely merger events, crystallization, and fossil fields from prior evolution stages. Disentangling these channels is complicated given the inherent difficulties of detecting fields in white dwarfs. To better understand magnetic white dwarfs, I use large telescopes such as the ARC 3.5m, the MMT 6.5m, and the Gemini 8m telescopes to obtain high-quality spectra and analyze the parameters of these objects.

Recently, we have been discovering white dwarfs that show variations in the depths of their absorption features as they rotate. These "double-faced" white dwarfs likely have inhomogeneous atmospheres, in which a magnetic field has altered the distribution of hydrogen and helium across their surfaces. There are only a handful of these objects known currently, so expanding this class of objects is necessary to better constrain the range of atmosphere geometries, effective temperatures, and field strengths in these exotic white dwarfs. I am currently analyzing multi-epoch spectra from large surveys such as the SDSS and DESI to identify new double-faced systems and conduct follow-up observations at large telescopes.