High-Energy Astrophysics

I am currently an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), working at the Chandra X-ray Center in the ACIS Operations Team. I previously held postdoctoral appointments at MIT Kavli Institute, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and the CfA. I received my Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and my Master of Science and doctoral degrees in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, working with Don Lamb.

My main research interests are merging galaxy clusters and the physics of the intracluster medium (ICM), a hot, magnetized plasma that comprises the bulk of the cluster's baryonic material. The ICM radiates in X-rays, and telescopes such as Chandra and XMM-Newton have revealed a wide array of interesting phenomena. You can find out more about my research at this page.

For this research I have been primarily using the FLASH code, developed primarily at the FLASH Center at the University of Chicago, though a substantial portion of the code modules necessary for simulating galaxy cluster mergers was developed by Paul Ricker. I have recently also been using the Enzo and Athena codes for these simulations as well. I am also a contributor to the yt Project, an analysis and visualization system for astrophysical simulation data (yes, that's a mouthful!). I help maintain yt's FLASH and Athena frontends and develop algorithms for visualization and analysis of particle data, mock X-ray observations, and initial conditions generation. To find out more about my contributions to scientific software, go here.

Curriculum Vitae

Papers on arXiv, ADS

Contact Info  
Mail: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
  60 Garden St., MS-67
  Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-496-1816
Email: jzuhone@cfa.harvard.edu
Twitter: @astrojaz