John Downman Hamilton Professor - Dept. of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Astronomer - NAASC, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Aaron S. Evans

  • The GOALS Project
  • UVA/NRAO Astronomy Colloquium Series
  • Extragalactic Research at UVA/NRAO


  • Summary of Research

    My current research primarily deals with observations of colliding galaxies and their associated phenomena (starbursts and active galactic nuclei, or AGN). The study of these galaxies requires a multi-wavelength approach, which to date has included optical to mid-infrared imaging, as well as near-infrared and (sub)millimeter spectroscopy. The observing facilities used to carry out these programs are the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Herschel Space Observatory, the Atacama Large (sub)Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the JVLA, the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton), the Palomar and Apache Point Observatories, and the IRAM 30m telescope in Spain.

    In the process of carrying out these studies, I have benefited from extensive collaborations with Lee Armus (SSC, Caltech), Joseph Mazzarella (IPAC, Caltech), Jason Surace (Eureka Scientific), Vassilis Chamandaris (University of Crete), Dong-Chan Kim (NRAO), Sabrina Stierwalt (Occidental College), Tanio Diaz-Santos (FORTH), Jeff Rich (Carnegie), Kazushi Sakamoto (ASIAA), Susanne Aalto (Chalmers), Dave Sanders (University of Hawaii), Vivian U (UC Irvine), Kazushi Iwasawa (Barcelona), Eric Murphy (NRAO) and Ilsang Yoon (NRAO), as well as with my present and former graduate students Tatjana Vavilkin, George Privon (NRAO), Andre Wong (University of Arizona), Loreto Barcos-Munoz (NRAO), Jake Borish, Sean Linden (University of Massachussetts Amherst) and Yiqing Song.

    This is my (incomplete) academic tree.

  • Publications and Preprints
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Talks

    The Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) collaboration has been awarded Early Release Science (ERS) time with JWST to obtain imaging and spectroscopy of four LIRGs. These are - NGC 7469 (seyfert nucleus with a circumnuclear ring of star formation), VV 114 (heavily reddened eastern nucleus), NGC 3256 (two nuclei, both with outflows) and IIZw096 (reddened off-nuclear starburst, or a triple system). Details of the program can be found here. A Space Telescope Science Institute press release on the project is here, and one published by UVA is here.

    Figure: Composite HST B and I-band images of the four JWST targets.

    My GOALS collaborator Dr. Lee Armus and I wrote an article on Cosmic Crashes as the cover story for the December 2021 issue of Scientific American. The cover of the issue is shown above.


    Page Last Updated March 2022.