Welcome to my academic webpage. My name is Marvin Morgan and I am a second year graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a Ph.D. in Astronomy. I work with Professor Brendan P. Bowler on using historical records of extrasolar planetary system architectures and orbits to understand how giant planets form and evolve from both theoretical models and observational data. I utilize ground and space based observatories, such as the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in West Texas, MINERVA-Australis in Australia, W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to establish the relative importance of giant planet migration channels.

Prior to attending UT, I graduated with Distinction in Physics, a Bachelor of Arts in Physics & Astrophysics, and a Master of Science in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, I worked with Professor Robyn Sanderson, Professor Konstantin Batygin (Caltech), and Dr. Darryl Seligman (UC Boulder) on the dynamics and evoltuion of the giant planets in the early solar system.

When I'm not solving fundamental problems in exoplanet astronomy, I enjoy working out and cooking. I was captain of the Men's Varsity Track and Field team at Penn where I was a two-time Ivy League Champion and School record holder in the 60m Dash.

• CV

Research Interests

Early Solar System Evolution

The large-scale structure of the solar system has been shaped by a transient dynamical instability that may have been triggered by the interaction of the giants planets with a massive primordial disk of icy debris. We investigated the conditions under which this primordial disk could have coalesced into planets using analytic and numerical calculations. Our results favor a scenario wherein the dynamical instability of the outer solar system began immediately upon the dissipation of the gaseous nebula to avoid the overproduction of Earth-mass planets in the outer solar system.
Collisional Growth within the Solar System's Primordial Planetesimal Disk and the Timing of the Giant Planet Instability

Obliquities of Planet Hosting Stars

Transiting giant planets provide a natural opportunity to examine stellar obliquities, which offer clues about the origin and dynamical histories of close-in planets. Hot Jupiters orbiting Sun-like stars show a tendency for obliquity alignment, which suggests that obliquities are rarely excited or that tidal realignment is common. However, the stellar obliquity distribution is less clear for giant planets at wider separations where realignment mechanisms are not expected to operate. By comparing the reconstructed underlying inclination distributions, we find that the inferred minimum misalignment distributions of hot Jupiters spanning a/R∗ = 3–20 (≈ 0.01–0.1 AU) and warm Jupiters spanning a/R = 20–400 (≈ 0.1–1.9 AU) are in good agreement.
Signs of Similar Stellar Obliquity Distributions for Hot and Warm Jupiters Orbiting Cool Stars

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