Welcome to the online home of Qicheng Zhang! I'm currently a graduate student studying planetary science at Caltech in Pasadena, CA. I mostly work on small body astronomy—comets, asteroids, and related objects that roam the solar system. This site attempts to capture key aspects of my research, and perhaps eventually, some of the other fun things that I'm involved with.
Personal & Academic History
I was originally from China, but largely grew up in Southern California where I've mostly resided in the present millenium. I attended UC Santa Barbara as an undergraduate student in physics (2013–2017), and also spent a couple summers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory over this period. I'm presently pursuing a Ph.D. in planetary science at Caltech (2017–).
Recent Highlights
2022 Aug 7: Zhang et al. (2022) (arXiv:2205.02854) published on observations showing a halo of icy grains in the coma of C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) while it was still beyond Jupiter's orbit.
2021 Oct 13: New paper Zhang et al. (2021) (arXiv:2107.12370) published on comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) and its close encounter with Venus in December.