Chase (政生) Urasaki

About Me

I am a first-year Astronomy Ph.D. student at the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy interested in exoplanets and instrumentation. I grew up in Pearl City, Hawai'i, attended Aiea High School, and completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Hawai'i in astrophysics and mathematics.

Before moving onto my Ph.D., I was an Electrical Engineering Master's Student in the Robotic Space Exploration (RoSE) Lab headed by Dr. Frankie Zhu at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

In between my undergraduate and graduate studies, I worked at the Hawai'i Legislature for the House Education Committee working on policy for public education. It was there that I truly appreciated not only the educational opportunities that I've had been so fortunate to receive but also the importance of outreach and sharing my experience and enthusiasm for what I believe is a fundamental science. Although my "day" job is astronomy and astrophysics, I'm on the quest to find the best ramen and tsukemen out there.

Education

M.S. Electrical Engineering (2021 - 2024)

College of Engineering, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI

B.S. Astrophysics & B.S. Mathematics(2015 - 2019)

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI

Research

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of astronomy and electrical engineering.

Current Projects

Atmospheric Escapes in Young Planets

Young, close-in exoplanets are subject to photo-evaporation of their primordial helium atmospheres. This is likely the cause of the so-called "Fulton Gap" that is present in the radius distribution of small planets. Using transit spectroscopy with Keck/NIRSPEC, I search for excess absorption of the Metastable Helium triplet lines that are indicative of extended atmospheres and escaping gas. Combined with modeling, this is a powerful tool to establish relationships with host stars and constrain the evolution of exoplanets.

Past Projects

Nano-Spectrometer

I worked with Dr. Paul Lucey on a tiny, commercial-off-the-shelf component, no-moving parts Fourier Transform Spectrometer. The appeal of this would be for future small SWaP remote sensing missions either in space or here on Earth. I built a Python-based interface to capture IR imaging data from a Teledyne FLIR Lepton with a micro-servo mount to enable FT spectroscopy.

Optical Jitter Metrology for CubeSats

For my Master's Thesis work, I worked on developing, characterizing, and testing an optical metrology system for jitter for one of the Hawai'i Space Flight Lab's cubesat missions, HyTI. This system would analyze the 2D motion of a reflected laser beam to track the magnitude and frequency content of micro-vibrations in the system and which sources caused those vibrations. The data and code are all available here, as well as a manuscript of my thesis, and a link to the defense talk.

Characterizing the comet C/2014 S2 (Pan-STARRS)

While completing my pre-requisites for the M.S. in E.E. degree in the Fall of 2021, I worked with Dr. Karen Meech on characterizing the long-period comet C/2014 S2.

Personal

When I'm not doing astronomy, I love taking photos - check out some of my favorites below!

I also enjoy hiking, reading, and exploring the intersections of art and science. I also play bass trombone in the Honolulu Wind Ensemble.

I also enjoy hiking, reading, and exploring the intersections of art and science. I also play bass trombone in the Honolulu Wind Ensemble.

Contact

Please do not hesitate to send me an email with any questions you may have about my research, experiences as a student, projects, or really anything on this site!

E-MAIL: chasemu [at] hawaii [dot] edu

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Elements

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