Trent Dupuy	Detecting Extrasolar Planets With Pan-STARRS Astronomers have finally been able to test their ideas about how planets form now that 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered using the radial velocity technique. The Pan-STARRS-1 telescope being built by the IfA will be used to search for planets around the smallest and coolest stars in the Galaxy: red dwarfs. Our ideas about planet formation around these low-mass stars is completely untested, and different models make very different predictions about the types of planets that should be found around red dwarfs.
Steven A. Rodney	The Supernova Mystery: Measuring the Universe with Enigmatic Explosions Supernovae - violent explosions in which some stars end their lives - are among the most spectacular events in the Universe. By observing supernovae, astronomers have measured the cosmic expansion and have found that it is speeding up! This unexpected result is driving much of modern cosmology, but the basic tool - the supernova itself - is still shrouded in mystery. What do these stars look like before they explode? What causes the explosion? The answers may help to define the future of observational cosmology.
Mark Willman	A New Method for Dating Asteroids Understanding our solar system's origin requires accurately dating asteroids and comets (the oldest/least altered material in our solar system). The dynamical dating method tracks the spreading of asteroid families over time. A new method of dating asteroids uses their colors. There is evidence that the stony asteroids slowly become redder due to solar wind, a sort of sunburn. Mark Willman, under the direction of Robert Jedicke, is taking spectra of the youngest known asteroid family to determine their color. So far, these asteroids are bluer than expected.

Trent Dupuy, a third-year PhD student, is originally from Shreveport, Louisiana. During the summer of 2003, Trent made his first visit to Hawaii as one of the IfA's REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students. He spent the summer working with Bo Reipurth. Trent received his BS in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2004. He returned to Hawaii that fall as a graduate student and, having recently passed his qualifying exams, he will be working on a thesis with Michael Liu.

Steven Rodney, in his fourth year at the IfA, is working on a PhD thesis on type Ia supernova progenitors with John Tonry. Steve is from Cleveland, Ohio, and received his BS in Physics and Astronomy from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, where he minored in Japanese. In 2003, he received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to support his first three years of research and study at the IfA. He is now supported by a grant for Hubble Space Telescope archival research from NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute.

Mark Willman is a fifth-year nontraditional grad who spent two decades in Hilo as an orchid grower. The discovery of extrasolar planets in the late 1990s fired his imagination and prompted a return to the academy. He says, "This is not the most efficient way to get an education, but the pleasure of doing science has justified the switch. We live in an extraordinary time for astronomy, when CCDs, large mirrors, and powerful computers are producing a flood of data and insights."

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