Astronomy Department
Indiana University
Swain West
727 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: (812) 855-6925
Fax: (812) 855-8725
Email: krhode [at] indiana.edu

Biographical Information:

Katherine Rhode joined the IU Astronomy faculty in August 2007. After receiving a B.A. 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 an M.A. in Astronomy at Wesleyan University in 1997 and a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Yale University in 2003. She was an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow, with a joint appointment at Wesleyan and Yale Universities.

Dr. Rhode's primary research area is the origin and evolution of massive galaxies. She studies how giant galaxies form by quantifying the ensemble properties of their globular cluster systems. She has ongoing projects to survey the globular cluster systems of spiral, lenticular, and elliptical galaxies with wide-field CCD detectors and to study the kinematics and dynamics of extragalactic globular cluster systems with multi-object spectrographs like WIYN/Hydra, AAT/2dF and Keck/DEIMOS.

In addition to her reseach on galaxies, Dr. Rhode also studies the rotational and angular momentum evolution of young, solar-type stars. She is currently working on a WIYN/Hydra study of the projected rotational velocities of T Tauri stars in the Galactic open clusters NGC 2264 and IC 348.

Selected Publications

• A black hole in a globular cluster
  Maccarone, T. J., Kundu, A., Zepf, S. E., & Rhode, K. L. 2007, Nature, 7124, 183.
• The Variability and Rotation of Pre-main Sequence Stars in IC 348: Does Intracluster Environment Influence Stellar Rotation?
  Nordhagen, S., Herbst, W., Rhode, K. L., & Williams, E. C. 2006, AJ, 132, 1555.
• The Effect of Substructure on Mass Estimates of Galaxies
  Yencho, B. M., Johnston, K. V., Bullock, J. S., & Rhode, K. L. 2006, ApJ, 643, 154.
• Wide-field Kinematics of Globular Clusters in the Leo I Group
  Bergond, G., Zepf, S. E., Romanowsky, A. J., Sharples, R. M., & Rhode, K. L., 2006, A&A, 448, 155.
• Metal-poor Globular Clusters and the Formation of Their Host Galaxies
  Rhode, K. L., Zepf, S. E., & Santos, M. R. 2005, ApJ, 630 L21.
• The Globular Cluster Systems of the Early-Type Galaxies NGC 3379, NGC 4406, and NGC 4594 and Implications for Galaxy Formation
  Rhode, K. L. & Zepf, S. E. 2004, AJ, 127, 302.


• 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

Katherine Rhode Personal Webpage