Audrey Budlong (she/her)

Audrey is a physics PhD student at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research focuses on Differential Chromatic Refraction (DCR). DCR stretches the point spread function (PSF) of astronomical sources making them appear to shift position and causing the differential spread of wavelengths. Her work introduces a new way to account for these PSF position errors. By taking repeated observations of the sky over varying observing conditions, she will build an innovative model of the spectrum of each pixel in each region of the sky. This produces a more fine-grained spectrum that is distinct for different object types, which is important when attempting to identify unusual sources (like active galactic nuclei). Her project also applies the algorithms to make accurate subtraction templates to reduce the number of false positive source detections.