Faculty | Katherine L. Rhode

Associate Professor
Ph.D. Astronomy, Yale University, 2003

Contact Information:

Department of Astronomy
Indiana University
Swain West 315
727 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: (812) 855-6925
Email: krhode [at] indiana.edu

Biographical Information

Katherine Rhode joined the IU Astronomy faculty in August 2007. After earning a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Sonoma State University in 1989, she held positions at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She earned a Master's degree in Astronomy at Wesleyan University in 1997 and a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Yale University in 2003. From 2003 to 2006, she was an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow with a joint appointment at Wesleyan and Yale Universities.

Dr. Rhode serves on the Board of Directors of the WIYN 3.5-m Observatory and the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association.

Research Interests

Dr. Rhode's primary research area is the origin and evolution of galaxies and their stellar populations. She has ongoing projects to survey the globular cluster populations of giant spiral, lenticular, and elliptical galaxies with wide-field CCD cameras and to study the kinematics and dynamics of extragalactic globular cluster systems with multi-object spectrographs like WIYN/Hydra, AAT/AAOmega and MMT/Hectospec. Dr. Rhode is also leading a campaign to obtain WIYN ODI imaging of specific types of objects discovered by the ALFALFA neutral hydrogen survey, and she was involved in the discovery of the nearby galaxy Leo P.

In addition to her research on galaxies, Dr. Rhode has investigated the rotational evolution of young, solar-type stars.  She has used WIYN/Hydra to measure the rotational velocities of hundreds of T Tauri stars located in Galactic open clusters like the Orion Nebula Cluster, IC 348, and NGC 2264.

Teaching

• A105:  Stars and Galaxies
• A452:  Extragalactic Astrophysics
• A505:  Principles and Techniques of Observational Astronomy
• A780:  Graduate Seminar on Stellar Populations in Galaxies

Selected Publications

• Off the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation: A Population of Baryon-dominated Ultra-diffuse Galaxies
  Mancera Piña, P.E., Fraternali, F., Adams, E.A.K., Marasco, A., Oosterloo, T., et al. (including K. Rhode), 2019, ApJ, 883, L33.
• Five Gas-rich Ultrafaint Dwarf Galaxy Candidates Discovered in WIYN Imaging of ALFALFA Sources
  Janesh, W., Rhode, K.L., Salzer, J.J., Janowiecki, S., Adams, E.A.K., Haynes, M.P., Giovanelli, R., Cannon, J.M. 2019, AJ, 157, 183.
• Discovery of a transient ultraluminous X-ray source in the elliptical galaxy M86
  van Haaften, L. M., Maccarone, T. J., Rhode, K. L., Kundu, A., Zepf, S. E. 2019, MNRAS, 483, 3566.
• The Enigmatic (Almost) Dark Galaxy Coma P: The Atomic Interstellar Medium
  Ball, C., Cannon, J. M. et al. 2018, AJ, 155, 65.
• (Almost) Dark Galaxies in the ALFALFA Survey: Isolated H i-bearing Ultra-diffuse Galaxies
  Leisman, L., Haynes, M.P., Janowiecki, S., Hallenbeck, G., Józsa, G., et al. (including K. Rhode), 2017, ApJ, 842, 133L.
• Detection of an Optical Counterpart to the ALFALFA Ultra-compact High-velocity Cloud AGC 249525
  Janesh, W., Rhode, K., Salzer, J., Janowiecki, S., Adams, E., et al., 2017, ApJL, 837, L16.
• Structural and Photometric Properties of the Andromeda Satellite Dwarf Galaxy Lacerta I from Deep Imaging with WIYN PODI
  Rhode, K., Crnojević, D., Sand, D., Janowiecki, S., Young, M.. Spekkens, K., 2017, ApJ, 836, 137.
• ALFALFA Discovery of the Most Metal-Poor Gas-Rich Galaxy Known: AGC 198691
  Hirschauer, A., Salzer, J., Skillman, E., Berg, D., McQuinn K., et al. (including K. Rhode), 2016, ApJ, 822, 108.
• Rotational Velocities and Radii of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster
  Rhode, K.L., Herbst, W., & Mathieu, R.D. 2001, AJ, 122, 3258

Complete list of refereed publications from ADS