IPAC, located on the Caltech campus, is not under direct threat from local fires at this time, though it is subject to the effects of strong winds and poor air quality. Many members of the IPAC community have been impacted by these events, and IPAC will follow Caltech guidance on closures and safe operations. For more information, visit Caltech’s Emergency Updates page at http://www.caltech.edu/emergency.

Yuna Kwon

Title: Assistant Scientist

Room Number: MR-200D

Email (@ipac.caltech.edu): yuna

Research Interests: I have been looking into microscale physical and compositional properties of dust particles consisting of small bodies in the solar system, such as comets and asteroids. By characterizing cometary activity and dust ejecta, I aim to understand 1) how dust particles were put together into comet nuclei, 2) to put observations into the context of small body evolution, so that I can eventually 3) delineate the structural evolution of the solar system. I am also interested in filling the gap between comets and asteroids which are expected to be accreted around or beyond the water ice line in the protoplanetary disk. To this end, I conduct observations in various observing modes, including polarimetry, spectroscopy, and photometry covering optical to thermal IR wavelengths. Two main data catalogs I am interested in are the WISE and ZTF databases.