“I’m interested in techniques that open new windows for studying the universe—making it possible to see things clearly that were previously out of reach. This technology development happens when we bring new techniques to integrate into telescopes. That’s not trivial—we really need to understand how observations work in practice to bridge the gap.”

Yoo Jung Kim

Yoo Jung Kim explores what she describes as a middle space in planetary science—at the intersection between astronomy and instrumentation—bringing new optical technologies from theory and the lab to working telescopes.

Ms. Kim’s work focuses on photonic lanterns, fiberoptic devices that organize messy starlight captured by ground-based telescopes into multiple stable beams. The lanterns preserve subtle patterns in the light—signals normally blurred in traditional observations but containing key information about where the light originated. Realizing this, Ms. Kim and her team at University of California, Los Angeles, along with international collaborators, extended a computational technique to reconstruct images from the lantern’s outputs, retrieving fine details otherwise hidden.

At Hawai‘i’s Subaru Telescope, Ms. Kim’s team tested their approach on Beta Canis Minoris, a bright star 162 light-years away surrounded by a swirling gas disk. They achieved measurements five times more precise than previous methods, revealing that the disk is unexpectedly lopsided. This confirmed the method’s power and presented a new scientific mystery.

As a 51 Pegasi b Fellow, Ms. Kim will extend photonic lantern technology in two ways. First, she’ll combine lanterns with specialized chips to null blinding starlight while faint planetary light passes through, enabling observations of planets much closer to their stars. She plans to test the device on the Subaru Telescope by observing real stars. Second, she’ll adapt the technology to reconstruct sharper images of fainter objects, expanding its use from distant stars and their surroundings to galaxies beyond our own.

This work could reveal invisible worlds. Ms. Kim aims to probe the innermost parts of protoplanetary disks and potentially image exoplanets being born in Jupiter-like orbits—thought to be the primary sites where gas giants form, and closer than those in Neptune-like orbits observed today.

Photonic devices are lightweight and compact, and might image Earth-like planets as part of future space telescope missions—including the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory—without the need to manage the blurring effect of Earth’s atmosphere.

During her early studies in observational astronomy, Ms. Kim became fascinated by the technologies enabling people to study the universe, but she did not always see a clear path into that field. Today, she is motivated to open new realms of possibility for astronomy—and new paths for aspiring scientists—through both her research and mentoring.

Ms. Kim will receive her Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from University of California, Los Angeles in Spring 2026.