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Dr Ryan Ridden

Contact

Department: School of Physical & Chemical Sciences

Email: ryan.ridden@canterbury.ac.nz

Direct Dial: +64 3 3691131

Office:

Language: English

About
Research / Creative works
Projects
Methods & Equipment

Fields of Research

  • Supernova progenitors
  • Solar system
  • Instrument calibration
  • High cadence astronomy
  • Photometric data reduction
  • Light echoes

Researcher Summary

I'm an astronomer with expertise in high cadence observations, primarily from the Kepler and TESS space telescopes. With this data I study all transient phenomena, from asteroids and comets in the solar system, to supernovae in distant galaxies. For supernovae I look at the first moments after explosion to try and understand what stars and star systems actually produced the supernova. Understanding how supernovae occur is crucial for understanding the universe through cosmology.

Alongside studying known supernovae, I lead a project to search for the fastest explosions in the universe. This project searches the enormous amount of high cadence image data made available by Kepler and TESS. Anomaly detection and event characterisation are key for this project.

In order to have the best data possible, I have developed tools in data reduction and data calibration. Current community Python packages I have developed are TESSreduce, for TESS data reduction and Calibrimbore, for instrument calibration. I am also the Science PI of the SynDiff project to forward model TESS data using ground based observations.

Subject Area: Disciplines

  • Physics: Astronomy; Astrophysics; Cosmology

Resources

  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
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Research/Scholarly/Creative Works

Journal Articles
  • Andreoni I., Coughlin MW., Perley DA., Yao Y., Lu W., Cenko SB., Kumar H., Anand S., Ho AYQ. and Kasliwal MM. (2023) Publisher Correction: A very luminous jet from the disruption of a star by a massive black hole (Nature, (2022), 612, 7940, (430-434), 10.1038/s41586-022-05465-8). Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05699-0.
  • Andreoni I., Coughlin MW., Perley DA., Yao Y., Lu W., Cenko SB., Kumar H., Anand S., Ho AYQ. and Kasliwal MM. (2022) A very luminous jet from the disruption of a star by a massive black hole. Nature 612(7940): 430-434. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05465-8.
  • Calamida A., Matheson T., Olszewski EW., Saha A., Axelrod T., Shanahan C., Holberg J., Points S., Narayan G. and Malanchev K. (2022) Perfecting Our Set of Spectrophotometric Standard DA White Dwarfs. Astrophysical Journal 940(1) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac96f4.
  • Jacobson-Galán WV., Dessart L., Jones DO., Margutti R., Coppejans DL., Dimitriadis G., Foley RJ., Kilpatrick CD., Matthews DJ. and Rest S. (2022) Final Moments. I. Precursor Emission, Envelope Inflation, and Enhanced Mass Loss Preceding the Luminous Type II Supernova 2020tlf. Astrophysical Journal 924(1) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3f3a.
  • Jacobson-Galán WV., Venkatraman P., Margutti R., Khatami D., Terreran G., Foley RJ., Angulo R., Angus CR., Auchettl K. and Blanchard PK. (2022) The Circumstellar Environments of Double-peaked, Calcium-strong Transients 2021gno and 2021inl. Astrophysical Journal 932(1) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac67dc.
  • Lister T., Kelley MSP., Holt CE., Hsieh HH., Bannister MT., Verma AA., Dobson MM., Knight MM., Moulane Y. and Schwamb ME. (2022) The LCO Outbursting Objects Key Project: Overview and Year 1 Status. Planetary Science Journal 3(7) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ac7a31.
  • Tinyanont S., Ridden-Harper R., Foley RJ., Morozova V., Kilpatrick CD., Dimitriadis G., DeMarchi L., Gagliano A., Jacobson-Galan WV. and Messick A. (2022) Progenitor and close-in circumstellar medium of type II supernova 2020fqv from high-cadence photometry and ultra-rapid UV spectroscopy. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 512(2): 2777-2797. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2887.
  • Armstrong P., Tucker BE., Rest A., Ridden-Harper R., Zenati Y., Piro AL., Hinton S., Lidman C., Margheim S. and Narayan G. (2021) SN2017jgh: A high-cadence complete shock cooling light curve of a SN IIb with the Kepler telescope. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 507(3): 3125-3138. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2138.
  • Wang Q., Rest A., Zenati Y., Ridden-Harper R., Dimitriadis G., Narayan G., Villar VA., Magee MR., Foley RJ. and Shaya EJ. (2021) SN 2018agk: A Prototypical Type Ia Supernova with a Smooth Power-law Rise in Kepler (K2). Astrophysical Journal 923(2) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac2c84.
  • Ridden-Harper R., Tucker BE., Gully-Santiago M., Barentsen G., Rest A., Garnavich P. and Shaya E. (2020) K2: Background Survey - The search for undiscovered transients in Kepler/K2 data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 498(1): 33-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2247.
  • Ridden-Harper R., Tucker BE., Garnavich P., Rest A., Margheim S., Shaya EJ., Littlefield C., Barensten G., Hedges C. and Gully-Santiago M. (2019) Discovery of a new WZ sagittae-type cataclysmic variable in the Kepler/K2 data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 490(4): 5551-5559. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz2923.
  • Anderson JP., Pessi PJ., Dessart L., Inserra C., Hiramatsu D., Taggart K., Smartt SJ., Leloudas G., Chen TW. and Möller A. (2018) A nearby super-luminous supernova with a long pre-maximum & "plateau" and strong C II features. Astronomy and Astrophysics 620 http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833725.
  • Abbott BP., Abbott R., Abbott TD., Acernese F., Ackley K., Adams C., Adams T., Addesso P., Adhikari RX. and Adya VB. (2017) Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger. Astrophysical Journal Letters 848(2) L12: 59. http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9.
  • Andreoni I., Ackley K., Cooke J., Acharyya A., Allison JR., Anderson GE., Ashley MCB., Baade D., Bailes M. and Bannister K. (2017) Follow up of GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart by Australian-led observing programmes. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 34 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2017.65.
  • Möller A., Tucker BE., Armstrong P., Chang SW., Lowson N., Onken CA., Panther F., Ridden-Harper R., Ruiter AJ. and Scalzo R. (2017) First Results of the SkyMapper Transient Survey. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union 14(S339): 3-6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743921318002077.
  • Ridden-Harper R., Tucker BE., Sharp R., Gilbert J. and Petkovic M. (2017) Capability of detecting ultraviolet counterparts of gravitational waves with GLUV. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 472(4): 4521-4531. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2270.
  • Layden B., Hole MJ. and Ridden-Harper R. (2015) High-beta equilibria in tokamaks with pressure anisotropy and toroidal flow. Physics of Plasmas 22(12) http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4939026.
Conference Contributions - Published
  • Abbot HJ., Kaipachery N., Sayat M., Mathew J., Ridden-Harper R., Tucker BE., Gilbert J. and Sharp R. (2020) GLUV pathfinder: Setting up for rapid cadence UV monitoring of the transient universe. In Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 11444 http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2562172.
  • Nirmal K., Mathew J., Gilbert J., Sharp R., Abbot H., Ridden-Harper R. and Tucker B. (2020) GLUV pathfinder mission. In Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 11203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2539908.
  • Sharp R., Tucker B., Ridden-Harper R., Bloxham G. and Petkovic M. (2016) GLUV: A balloon-borne high-cadence ultraviolet monitoring telescope for supernova shock breakouts and exoplanet atmospheres. In Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 9908 http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2231555.

Future Research

  • Search for the fastest explosions
  • Asteroid detection and tracking in high cadence data
  • LSST Mt John Observatory transient survey
  • The origins of supernovae
  • Unifying all optical telescope observations

Key Methodologies

  • Python 3
  • Data reduction
  • Time series analysis
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