About Me

Welcome to my little corner of the internet.  My name is Nathan Deg and I am an astrophysicist.  Currently I am a CanDIAPL software developer based at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Previously, I was a CIRADA software developer also based in Kingston. Before these, I was a SARChI post-doctoral researcher at UCT in the Cape Town.  I did my Masters and Ph.D. work at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

CanDIAPL stands for the Canadian Data Intensive Astronomy PLatform (https://www.candiapl.ca/). As a part of CanDIAPL, I split my time between building software pipelines for analyzing astronomical data and using that same data to do exciting science. I specifically focus on software for the kinematic modelling of galaxies. The idea behind this work is to use observations of galaxies (in my case, observations of the gas) to figure out how things in the galaxy are moving. And with that information we can learn about how much dark matter a galaxy has, where that dark matter is located, how the structures of galaxies are affected by environment, how galaxies grow and evolve with time, and lots more.

In addition to this work, I like to study simulations to compare them to observations. These comparisons can tell us about the physics that drives galaxy structure and evolution, as well as help us to figure out how to improve future simulations. Moreover, these sorts of comparisons can be used to make predictions about what we might see in the future. I also like to study some of the more extreme galaxies, like polar ring galaxies as well as very faint galaxies to look at the limits of galaxy formation and evolution.

I’m also passionate about teaching and outreach.  Astronomy and astrophysics has a power to inspire people and deeply change how they see themselves in the Universe.  Seeing people gain that understanding and have one of those wonderful ‘a-ha’ moments is one of the most rewarding things that I can do.

This page has a summary of my research and gives access to a few of the tools that I use.  Feel free to contact me at nathan.deg@queensu.ca