About
I'm Roger Wesson, an astronomer working at Cardiff University, where I investigate the dust associated with core-collapse supernovae and their progenitors. Previously I was at University College London, working in the sndust group. Before that, I spent four years in Chile, where I was a Fellow at the European Southern Observatory and spent 80 nights a year supporting operations at the Very Large Telescope, including nighttime support on UT3 (Melipal). And before ESO, I was an undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoc at UCL. These pages contain information about my research.
Research
I'm interested in two main topics: firstly, core-collapse supernovae and the dust they produce. How much do they make, when do they make it, and what ultimately happens to it? And secondly, chemical abundances in planetary nebulae and HII regions. These objects are now believed to contain some amount of cold, hydrogen-deficient gas, which affects abundance measurements. What is the origin of this material? Can we constrain its physical conditions and determine accurately the total heavy element content of these nebulae?
My most recent 5 publications:
- March 2025: JWST observations of the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720): III. A dusty disk around its Central Star
- February 2025: VizieR Online Data Catalog: NESS II Infrared and Sub-mm results (Scicluna+, 2022)
- February 2025: The infancy of a supernova remnant: Probing ejecta dynamics, dust evolution, and the emerging compact object in SN 1987A with JWST
- February 2025: The planetary nebula NGC 3132 revisited: high definition 3D photoionization model
- February 2025: Building the Legacy of Supernova 2023ixf: How Does Molecule Formation Lead to Dust?
See the full list of 207 papers on my publications page, and where in the sky I've been looking on my sky map page
Codes
Some of the codes I've written:
- alfa - automated line fitting algorithm
- neat - nebular empirical analysis tool
- astro-ph sorter - list up to 30 days of astro-ph abstracts, sorted according to your research interests
- airmass.org - visibility plotting tool for observation planning
See more on my codes page.
Photography
I do a lot of astrophotography when I find myself in places with dark skies, and I am an ESO photo ambassador. More details on my photography page.
