![[Cushing]](images/selfie.jpg)
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the director of the Ritter Planetarium at the University of Toledo. My research focuses on the discovery and characterization of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the solar neighborhood using ground- and spaced-based telescopes and the development of the algorithms to both reduce and analyze these data. My research is supported by NASA and the NSF.
![[WISE0611-04]](images/WISE0611-04.png)
WISE 0611-04 is a Flux-Reversal Binary. Chris Gelino has shown
that WISE 0611-45, originally identified as a T0 dwarf in our search of
the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data, is actually a
binary star with component spectral types of L9 and T1.5. Even more
interesting is the fact that it is one of only six binaries where the
magnitude differences between the components show a reversal in sign
between the Y/J band and the H/K bands. Such binaries offer one of the
best opportunities to understand the enigmatic L/T transition. The
results have been published in the Astrophysical Journal
in Gelino
et al. (2014).