I, Me, Myself I am an observational Astronomer (in the making!). I am in my 3rd year of the Ph.D program in Astronomy. My work deals with the properties of Binary Brown Dwarfs. Born in India, my interest in Astronomy began at the age of 11 when my mother showed me the the Orion Constellation, also known as the Vyada Nakshatra, in Sanskrit. I was hooked. I did school projects on Constellations, Black Holes and gave a year-end Astronomy talk in my college, titled “A Journey into the unknown”. Since then the quest to understand the mysteries of the universe has been on. I met my advisor, Prof. Eduardo L. Martin here at the University of Central Florida (UCF). I began my work in Fall 2005. Those interested in Ancient Indian Astronomy can have a look at few articles by Aniket. Aniket Sule was my classmate at IIT Bombay. Research Interests I just completed my work on Brown Dwarf candidates in the Sigma Orionis Cluster. The cluster which is 1 to 5 million years old is part of Orion OB association. It has a large number of brown dwarfs and possible exoplanets. It is one of most active star-forming region. M, L and T dwarfs have been identified in this cluster. We got some good data and a paper is in progress. My second interest and current work in studying the properties of Binary Brown Dwarfs. Studying these dwarfs are a lot easier than single dwarfs, because much more information can be obtained when observing binaries. Most important question in the Brown Dwarf community is, “Can we find a link between stars and planets? Is Y dwarf this missing link?” It is very difficult to observe a “Y” dwarf with our observational techniques. Though, it is a lot better than searching habitable planets yet current technology does not seem to be adept for this task. My third interest is in search for exoplanets or extra-solar planets. Few weeks ago, Prof. Harrington from the planetary group at UCF was able to observe silicates on exoplanets and in another paper was able to observe day and night temperatures on an jupter-like planet. Such amazing discovering and taking me into this field as well! List of published papers are below. Other Interests Other than Astronomy, I love photography. Please check out my Photo Album page. I have a Nikon D80 camera and two lenses, 18-135 mm Nikon VR lens and a 60 mm Nikkor Macro Lens. The VR lenses are amazing. My next plan is to get 18-200 mm Nikon VR II lens and finally if I have enough money to buy a 14 mm fish-eye lens. You might expect I would do astrophotography but I do not. The noise from the CCD in Nikon is too large to do any good astrophotography. My interests include, Macro and Landscape photography. Is the photo above a sepia? Nope, it is not entirely sepia. I used sepia filter in order to leave my t-shirt color looking red. If you use sepia you will lose the red color. In addition, I like to read books though mostly Sci-fi, mystery and occasionally non-fictional. Check out my Books page. I like to drive and visit places. Pretty obviously I find Hawaii the best place to take photos and RELAX!! I also like to learn new languages. Right now I am trying to learn Spanish. I love first-shooter games like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty. I play mostly computer games. Age of Empire is my favorite. Papers (ADS Search) Resolved Hubble Space spectroscopy of ultracool binary systems, Martín, E. L.; Brandner, W.; Bouy, H.; Basri, G.; Davis, J.; Deshpande, R.; Montgomery, M., accepted for publication in A&A Spectroscopic rotational velocities of brown dwarfs, Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Martín, E. L.; Bouy, H.; Tata, R.; Deshpande, R.; Wainscoat, R., accepted for publication in A&A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrithttp://www.aip.de/~aniket/Photo%20Albums.htmlhttp://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond80/Books.htmlhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PRE&qform=AST&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&aut_logic=AND&obj_logic=OR&author=Deshpande%2C+R&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5
About Me
Name: Rohit Deshpande
 
Institution: University of Central Florida
Dept of Physics,
Astronomy and Planetary Sciences Group
 
Email: rohit “at” physics.ucf.edu
 
Favorite Quote: Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am)
 
Things I know:
 
  1. • Languages: English, French, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali
 
  1. • Programs I use: Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, Aperture

  2. • Research: IDL, IRAF, Super Mongo, JAVA, HTML, Python, Fortran

  3. • Proud owner of Mac! The best computer and the best OS!