Meng Sun 孙萌 -- an observer?

About Me (email: sunmeng_at_nao.cas.cn)

I was born and raised in Beijing, China. Although I've been tired of living in big cities, I still feel fortunate that I had access to great sources of learning astronomy as a middle school student, which led me to conduct my first hands-on astronomy research on the orbit of near-Earth asteroids and sungrazing comets. As an amateur astronomer for nine years, I came to UVa to pursue real astronomy research. Initially, people might assume that I should be an observer, but I spent most of my time in grad school studying the theory of stellar evolution, close binaries, and tides in late-type stars.

In grad school, I met my husband (same office, same Ph.D. advisor, and the same hometown), who is now in a tenure-track position at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences. I jokingly say that I married astronomy at some point! I am also an amateur astrophotographer, and all the pictures on the front page were taken by me. You're welcome to view my flickr photo album.