Homer L. Dodge Department
of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Oklahoma

I work on the interpretation of the spectroscopic, photometric, and statistical properties of supernovae. One goal is to learn how to infer the physical conditions of the ejected matter - the temperature, density, velocity, chemical composition, and mass. By comparing this information with the predictions of theoretical explosion models, we try to find out which kinds of stars produce the various observed supernova types, and how they explode. A related goal is to learn how to improve the use of supernovae as extragalactic distance indicators, to measure the history of the expansion of the universe.

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