Yanga Fernández

Dr. Fernández’s research area is in the physical and compositional properties of comets and asteroids. He is an observational astronomer, using ground-based and space-based telescopes to study active comets, extinct comets, Trans-neptunian objects, Centaurs, Trojans, primitive main-belt asteroids, and near-Earth asteroids. A more detailed listing of some current projects can be found on Dr. Fernández’s research page, and a complete list of published work can be found on his CV. Note that his ORCID tab on this page is somewhat incomplete, due to ORCID’s limitations. You may also check out his Google Scholar page.

Research summary using only the ten hundred most common words in English: I study space rocks and ice balls. Most of them are small, smaller than a big city. But they can tell us about how our home space-rock and other big, round space-rocks in our area of space — that all go around the Sun — were first made. What are ice balls and space rocks made of? How are they put together? How do they change over time? Did some space rocks and some ice balls used to be the same? How are ice balls in different places different from each other, now and in the past? How have they all changed our own home space-rock? What happened when we got hit by many space rocks and ice balls long ago? I study these things with big eyes in dark, cold, dry places with clear skies. These eyes use big mirrors to get the light from the rocks and ice balls. Some of the eyes also can tell how warm the rocks and ice balls are. But there is usually only a little light, so getting enough light is hard, and it takes many, long visits to the big eyes. Some of the ice balls that I study are each strange and interesting in their own way. But I also study big groups of many rocks and ice balls together to learn what is normal about them all, and what is not.