Tiara Hung

Tiara Hung

Postdoctoral Scholar

UC Santa Cruz

About Me

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Santa Cruz working in Prof. Ryan Foley’s UCSC Transient Team and am also a member of the Young Supernova Experiment. I obtained my PhD in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 2018. During my final years in graduate school, I participated in the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) as a commissioning member at Caltech and was partially funded by the GROWTH program. I was born and raised in Tapei, Taiwan. Before coming to the US, I used to work as a research assistant at ASIAA.

My research revolves around the observations of transient phenomena in supermassive black holes, through which we can study the physical processes operating in these systems and survey black hole demographics. Outside research, I enjoy travelling, cooking, reading, and painfully challenging hikes once in a while.

Interests

  • Tidal disruption events
  • Supermassive black holes
  • Data visualization
  • Statistical analysis

Education

  • PhD in Astronomy, 2018

    University of Maryland College Park

  • MSc in Astronomy, 2015

    University of Maryland College Park

  • BSc in Electrophysics, 2013

    National Chiao Tung University

Projects

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GROWTH Marshal

GROWTH Marshal

Python SQL Javascript Bokeh
A Dynamic Science Portal for Time-Domain Astronomy

Nuclear Transients Monitor

Nuclear Transients Monitor

Python DASH Plotly
Tracking the latest nuclear transients found by ZTF

Research Highlights

My work leverages on the large amount of time-series data that optical sky surveys offer to discover rare, sometimes previously unknown, astrophysical phenomena in near real-time using a combination of theoretical modeling and statistical inferences. One example that is very dear to my heart is the tidal disruption events (TDEs), which refer to the phenomenon of a star being shredded and devoured by a black hole. I am the PI of several observational programs (Hubble Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, Gemini, LCO) that aim to understand the underlying physical mechanisms by following up TDEs in their infancy with UV/optical photometry and spectroscopy.
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UV Spectroscopy of TDEs

UV Spectroscopy of TDEs

Studying outflow signatures in TDEs with the Hubble Space Telescope.

TDE Accretion Disks

TDE Accretion Disks

Measuring accretion disk parameters with the Hα emission line.

Press release Astrobites
Search for TDEs

Search for TDEs

Searching for TDEs using optical sky surveys.

Publications

My publications can be accessed on ADS and Google Scholar.

30+

Refereed Papers

7

First Author

1500+

Citations

19

h-index

Contact