Instrumentation and Observational Astronomy

About me:

Hi! I build new astronomical instruments to learn about new phenomena in outer space. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a Simonyi-NSF AAPF Scholar/CfA Fellow. I work in time-domain astrophysics, monitoring the night sky for new explosions to study the universe at a range of energy scales, from young stellar objects outbursting to superluminous supernovae.

I am PI of Boombox, a new set of optical spectrographs for time-domain astrophysics. I am also the instrument scientists for WINTER, which I worked on as a a graduate student in MIT Astrophysics with Prof. Rob Simcoe and the ground-based instrumentation group. My PhD was centered on designing, building, and using WINTER, which we installed at Palomar Observatory in June of 2023. You can learn more about Boombox, WINTER, and other instruments I have worked on at the research tab.

I also enjoy creating art, kayaking and hiking, and bringing space to the general public through outreach activities. Right now, I am running a design and build your own telescope after school class in Fabville, the maker space in Somerville High School.

Research: Instruments

Boombox

An upcoming high-throughput fiber-fed optical spectrograph for the MMT and Magellan Clay telescopes. Learn more.

WINTER

An all-sky infrared survey on a dedicated 1-meter robotic telescope.
Learn more.

LLAMAS

An integral field unit spectrograph splitting up the sky into 2400 fibers for simultaneous images and spectra on the Magellan Baade telescope. Learn more.

GMT AGWS

The acquisition, guide, and wavefront sensing prototype for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Learn more.

Research: Science

Outbursts of young stellar objects

As young stars form, they can accumulate mass in violent outbursts. To understand how these stars grow, we study the most extreme outbursts, called FU Orionis-type outbursts. Many of these events are hidden to optical telescopes, but shine brightly in the infrared. You can read more about their discovery and follow-up in Frostig et al. 2025.

Searching for kilonovae

When neutron stars merge with other neutron stars or black holes, they form a transient explosion called a kilonova, which leads to the formation of the heaviest elements. We can search for these events by following up gravitational-wave alerts and looking for new transients, especially infrared-bright transients. You can read more in Frostig et al. 2025 and Frostig et al. 2022.

Get in touch at danielle.frostig@cfa.harvard.edu

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Danielle Frostig