It was my dream to become an astronomer since grade 7. I got a children's atlas of astronomy as a present from a friend, and after reading the book for the first time I was set. For a long time it was sort of just something I said when people asked me what I wanted to do. But I kept taking the right courses and suddenly I found myself an undergrad in astronomy at the University of Western Ontario... and that was quite a few years ago now.

I still love astronomy, though I have maybe found that my calling is not as a research astronomer. I love looking at the starry sky far away from city lights, and I am awed by the immense universe that surrounds us. The physical processes that go on out there are on scales that we can hardly imagine and are very interesting and often still not well understood. Time and space are so vast...

By using the menu above you can get a bit more information on the research I've been involved with throughout my student years. I hope I manage provide a bit of insight of what I was doing without losing you in the details!

Here are some facts that are pretty amazing:

• If the Sun is were the size of an orange, then the earth would be smaller than a pin head.
• On that scale the distance to the next star would be about 1400 km away (about the distance between Winnipeg and Calgary)
• Every single atom in your body (other than hydrogen or helium) was created in the core of a star or in supernova explosion. Every one of those atoms came into your body through a long journey through space. You ARE literally star dust!