sketches
back


I like to doodle in my spare time. Here are some of my more presentable ones!

astronomical instruments series

These are illustrations of a few of the observational instruments used or developed by people in our department. They were sketched to decorate the glass door and windows of the CRA's new office space on the Georgia Tech campus. Some enjoy a little bit more creative license than others (looking at you, IceCube), but are overall meant to be faithful representations of official images. So most of the credit really goes to the teams behind each of these telescopes and the makers/takers of each original image.

alma

ALMA

Radio array, part of the Event Horizon Telescope. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/W. Garnier

icecube

IceCube

Neutrino detector embedded in the polar ice caps. Credit: Nicolle R. Fuller/NSF/IceCube

JWST

JWST

Optical and infrared space telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Northrop Grumman

LIGO

LIGO

Gravitational wave detector, first of its kind, now a part of the LVK (LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA) gravitational wave detector network. Credit: Shobhit Ranjan (CRA/LIGO) , Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab

LISA

LISA

Future space-based gravitational wave detector made up of three spacecrafts on heliocentric orbits. Credit: ESA

NewAthena

NewAthena

Future X-ray space telescope. Credit: ESA/X-IFU study team

Rubin

Rubin

Large optical survey instrument based in Chile. Also the first major telescope named after a woman. Credit: NOIRLab NSF/DOE

TechTower

Tech Tower

Clock tower on the Georgia Tech campus

Trinity

Trinity

Array of neutrino detectors based in Utah. Credit: A. Nepomuk Otte


Picture an Astronomer

Picture an Astronomer was a symposium held at the University of Chicago in March 2025 aimed at addressing the persistent underrepresentation of women in astrophysics. Out of this symposium, more than 200 astronomers came together to author a white paper of the same name, which synthesized into a single documents a set of recommendations addressing each axis of inequality still endemic to the field.
This effort was helmed by my dear friend Ava Polzin, who asked if I could help illustrate each section of the manuscript to hopefully entice readers to (at the very least) skim through the document.
Almost every sketch is based off of a different surrealist painting -- sources are all linked under the matching drawing.
I've also linked to the corresponding sections in the paper, for ease of access.

clock

Foreword

Inspired by Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory (1931)

alley

Introduction

Inspired by Dmitry Kochanovich's Ritual (Ритуал, 2019)