Above: Annular solar eclipse at the VLA, May 20 2012. The lens flare indicates the coverage of the moon over the sun at the time of the picture.
Contact info
twiegert at iaa . es Telephone/Whatsapp: +34 641 68 00 18
Work
I currently work at Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) in Granada, Spain, doing a postdoctoral contract for Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro. The duties here are two-fold: work as a liaison between the Spanish astronomical community and the immensely interesting Square Kilometre Array development (the world's coolest radio observatory!), as well as own research together with the team at the institute. And there is a lot of research I'd like to do...
Currently I am involved with the next data release for the C configuration observations (for the first and second data releases, D and B configuration, see the CHANG-ES website and my paper Wiegert et al 2015 (D configuration data release, arXiv link here) as well as Irwin et al. 2019 (B configuration data release) and the exciting news release here). I was also instrumental in getting new S-band observations of the CHANG-ES galaxies observed summer 2021, and that treasure trove of data is now waiting to be explored...
I am also working on a project (also CHANG-ES related) on tidal disruption events* in two galaxies, where we simultaneously observed using both the VLA (radio) and the SWIFT telescope (X-ray) in 2016. (* Here's an article about un unrelated tidal disruption event I wrote for EarthSky that explains a bit how exciting these happenings are!)
On my spare time I like doing outreach work via writing and editing for the excellent website Earthsky.org.
Please check out my CV (link at bottom) for full list of publications (needs some updating...).
Astronomy interests
Galaxy formation and evolution, galaxy kinematics, neutral hydrogen content, properties of disk galaxies, 'communication' between the disk and the gaseous halo, including the magnetic fields. Observations (VLA, JCMT, ATCA, OSO) and data reductions (CASA, IRAF, APLpy, python, matlab, etc...). Outreach and teaching! And thus any new astronomy discovery, the history of astronomy, as well as the art of communicating astronomy and science in the exciting manner which it deserves!
Background
I did my graduate studies (PhD) in astrophysics at the University of Manitoba, Canada, supervised by Dr. Jayanne English. My PhD thesis was on the topics of Spiral galaxy HI models, rotation curves and kinematic classifications (the link leads to its online location). Before that, I got my MSc degree in physics at the Göteborg University, Sweden, where I did my thesis work on galaxy evolution (using Hubble Deep Field South) at the Onsala Space Observatory.
My previous postdoctoral fellowship was at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, working with Dr. Judith Irwin on the exciting project Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies - an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES). During this time, I observed 406 hours worth of data (!) with the Karl. G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, and subsequently worked on this treasury of data with a wonderful group of astronomers from all over the world.
During my family leave in between, I continued to work on that project in different capacities, including some teaching.
Autumn 2019, I taught the 3rd year astrophysics course PHYS315 at Queens.