Adam Waszczak

Ph.D. in Planetary Science
(degree awarded May 2015)
waszczak@caltech.edu
California Institute of Technology
156 South Mudd Lab. (MC 150-21)
Pasadena, CA 91125
Dr. Waszczak is now a data scientist at 605, a media/consumer analytics company in New York, NY.

Past Research Interests

  • Demographics of solar system small bodies (asteroid and comet populations) using data-mining and machine-learning techniques with wide-field sky surveys, in particular the Palomar Transient Factory

  • Populations studied include main-belt comets, jovian trojans, and near-Earth asteroids

  • Origin of the terrestrial planets' volatile reservoirs---for example: were Earth's oceans or Mars' polar ices delivered by comets?

  • Water as a resource in asteroids---is there enough ice locked up in asteroids to sustain human space exploration, or commercial space-based resource utilization?


First-Author Publications

Small near-Earth asteroids in the Palomar Transient Factory survey: A real-time streak-detection system
A. Waszczak, Thomas A. Prince, Russ Laher, Frank Masci, Brian Bue, Umaa Rebbapragada, Tom Barlow, Jason Surace, George Helou, Shrinivas Kulkarni

Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 129, pp. 034402 (March 2017)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Asteroids in GALEX: Near-ultraviolet photometry of the major taxonomic groups
A. Waszczak, Eran O. Ofek, Shrinivas Kulkarni

The Astrophysical Journal, 809:92, 14pp. (August 2015)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Asteroid lightcurves from the Palomar Transient Factory survey: Rotation periods & phase functions from sparse photometry
A. Waszczak, Chan-Kao Chang, Eran O. Ofek, Russ Laher, Frank Masci, David Levitan, Jason Surace, Yu-Chi Cheng, Wing-Huen Ip, Daisuke Kinoshita, George Helou, Thomas A. Prince, Shrinivas Kulkarni

The Astronomical Journal, 150:75, 35pp. (August 2015)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Main-belt comets in the Palomar Transient Factory survey: I. The search for extendedness
A. Waszczak, E. O. Ofek, O. Aharonson, S. Kulkarni, D. Polishook, J. M. Bauer, D. Levitan, B. Sesar, R. Laher, J. Surace

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 433, p.3115-3132 (August 2013)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Secondary-Author Publications

Centaurs and scattered disk objects in the thermal infrared: Analysis of WISE/NEOWISE observations
J. M. Bauer, T. Grav, E. Blauvelt, A. Mainzer, J. Masiero, R. Stevenson, E. Kramer, Y. R. Fernández, C. Lisse, R. Cutri, P. Weissman, J. Dailey, F. Masci, R. Walker, A. Waszczak, C. Nugent, K. Meech, A. Lucas, G. Pearman, A. Wilkins, J. Watkins, S. Kulkarni, E. L. Wright

The Astrophysical Journal, 773:22, 11pp. (June 2013)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Asteroid rotation periods from the Palomar Transient Factory survey
D. Polishook, E. O. Ofek, A. Waszczak, S. Kulkarni, A. Gal-Yam, O. Aharonson, R. Laher, J. Surace, C. Klein, N. Brosch, D. Prialnik, C. Grillmair, B. Cenko, M. Kasliwal, N. Law, D. Levitan, P. Nugent, D. Poznanski, R. Quimby

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 421, p.2094-2108 (April 2012)
PDF e-print      ADS page      journal page     


Additional Links

Solar System Small-Body Demographics With the Palomar Transient Factory Survey
Ph.D. thesis hosted by the Caltech Library (290 page PDF file)

Solar system small bodies discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory survey
List of asteroids and comets discovered by PTF, through May 2015

Hydrogen and nitrogen cosmochemistry: A review
Article written for a course taught by D. Burnett at Caltech (January 2013)

A search for main-belt comets in the Palomar Transient Factory survey
Seminar slides presented as part of Caltech's Kleigel Lectures (November 2012)

Installing and running Find_Orb (by Project Pluto) for Linux
Useful freeware program that computes orbital elements from observations (R.A., Dec. & time)


Academic Summary

Ph.D. - California Institute of Technology (2010-2015)

B.A. - Cornell University (2005-2009)

  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • Major in Physics
  • Concentration in Astrophysics
  • Minor in French Language
  • Undergrad. advisor: Jean-Luc Margot

Biography

Adam Waszczak was born in 1987 in Connecticut and grew up in the town of Colchester. After completing college at Cornell University in upstate New York, in 2010 he moved to southern California for graduate school at Caltech. In May 2015 he defended his thesis (title: Solar System Small-Body Demographics With the Palomar Transient Factory Survey) and was awarded a Ph.D. in Planetary Science. In June 2015, Dr. Waszczak started work as a data scientist at Analytics Media Group (AMG), a media and consumer analytics start-up in New York, NY. In 2016, AMG was acquired and became 605, LLC.


This page was last updated March 2017