Aaron Meisner

I specialize in making and analyzing high-resolution maps from large astronomical survey data sets. Much of my work has focused on processing infrared images from NASA's NEOWISE mission, repurposing this vast asteroid-hunting data set for astrophysics beyond the inner solar system. I am using NEOWISE data to search for cold nearby worlds, including brown dwarfs in the solar neighborhood, wide substellar companions, and the hypothesized Planet Nine. I also play a key role in several wide-area optical imaging surveys, particularly DECaLS and MzLS.

I'm currently a staff astronomer at NSF's NOIRLab (formerly NOAO), where I previously spent a year as a NASA Hubble Fellow. At NOIRLab, I am a member of Rubin Observatory's Community Science Team (CST). I earned a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 2015. Before that I was an undergraduate at Stanford University, where I received a B.S. in physics in 2010.

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9

I co-founded this citizen science motion search, built around my WISE coadds.

Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors

I'm the PI of this new NASA-funded citizen science project, coming soon to Zooniverse!

DESI Imaging Surveys

I'm a core member of the DESI imaging surveys team, producing optical catalogs 1.5-2 mags deeper than SDSS across 20,000 square degrees of sky.

DESI Commissioning

I was a core member of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) commissioning team. My first-author SPIE paper shows a small sampling of my DESI commissioning work.

JWST Cycle 2 Program

I'm the PI of an approved Cycle 2 JWST program to obtain the first spectrum of the coldest known halo brown dwarf (WISEA 1534-1043 a.k.a. "The Accident").

WISE Coadds

I've reprocessed more than 300 terabytes of WISE images to create the deepest ever full-sky maps at 3-5 microns.

Spitzer Cycle 14 Campaign

I'm the PI of an approved Spitzer program that has imaged hundreds of extremely cold and fast-moving brown dwarf candidates newly revealed by combining the full WISE and NEOWISE data sets.

WISE Planet Nine Search

I have performed the deepest and widest area WISE-based search for Planet Nine.

The unWISE Catalog

We have published the deepest ever 3-5 micron full-sky catalog, featuring over 2 billion unique WISE-selected sources.

unTimely Catalog

A full-sky, time-domain version of the unWISE Catalog.

WISE Dust Map

I created a full-sky, high-resolution map of mid-infrared dust emission.

CatWISE

Accurate motion measurements for more than a billion infrared sources based on my time-resolved WISE coadds.