MSc

Benjamín Alexis

Navarrete Rivas


PhD student | Astrophysics | Science Communicator

Welcome!

About me


I am a Ph.D. student in Astrophysics at the Institute of Science and Techonolgy Austria (ISTA), primarily focused on the physics of galaxies at the first billion years after the Big-Bang. I am a MSc from the Astronomy Department of Universidad de Chile (DAS); former member of the SOCHIAS Whitelist which gives access to world class ground-based telescopes through the Chilean Telescope Allocation Committee (CNTAC); and former associated scientist at the Center for Astrophysics and Associated Tecnologies (CATA).

I am also a huge enthusiastic outside academy. I love teaching, and I have been involved in several science communication events for all public. I believe we have a tremendous amount of knowledge awaiting to be shared with people: Non communicated science is not science. Below you can find some pics of some of the cutest members of mi family!

Do it for them


Mao

This cat recieves his name because he meows extremely loud, and when he does, it sounds more like "mao" than "meow".

Peluche

Peluche is the spanish for teddy. This cat is so beautiful, soft and cuddly that we decided to give her that name.

Pirata

We adopted this poor cat in our house. She missed an eye, like a pirate, that's why she is called "Pirata". We love her so much.

In memoriam


Lucky

Lucky arrived a few years after Cacique. He was a funny poodle, quite happy and always excited to play with humans. The word exhausted did not exists in his vocabulary.

Cacique

Cacique is the name that the Spanish conquerors gave to the local leaders of indigenous communities. This is the first dog I have memory of adopting.

Research


Here you can find the activities and research projects I've been involved in.

My aim


From the Big-Bang to the dark ages, the physical evolution of the Universe is well understood through theories. However, with the birth of the first stars and galaxies, all the neutral baryonic material begins to ionize until the entire Universe became hot in what is called the "Epoch of Reionization".

There are several efforts to explain both observationally and theoretically how the Universe got ionized, but still there is no agreement on this topic. There seems to be a source or a mechanism of ionization that we are missing, hiding the secret of the Reionization Era. My goal is to unveil this secret through extensive studies on observations of early galaxies.

Current Research


I am currently investigating the properties of high redshift galaxies through local analogs. Local analogs are relatively young, nearby galaxies whose conditions resemble the early Universe. These are widely studied to unveil the behavior of distant galaxies since, in principle, they should present a similar laboratory.

There are several types of local analogs. In this particular case, I am studying nearby SDSS star-forming galaxies selected to assimilate galaxies at z ~ 2.3 to disentangle the relations between strong emission line ratios and metallicity. These relations have a huge scatter in literature and are quite uncertain when applied to high redshift galaxies. My study is an effort to shed light into those relations using high quality data gathered with the optical Magellan/MagE spectrograph at Las Campanas Observatory.

  1. Solar Anti-Hale Bipolar Magnetic Regions: A Distinct Population with Systematic Properties.

    A. Muñoz-Jaramillo, B. Navarrete, & L. Campusano. ApJ, 920, 31, 2021.

Outreach


We must make use of all channels to retribute to society our new knowledge on the Universe. By all means!

Teaching


This is a list of the coursework I have done as Teaching Assistant during my studies

2023


Spring

  • Astrophysics of Galaxies

2022


Fall

  • Astrophysics of Galaxies
  • Experimental Methods

Spring

  • Astrophysics of Galaxies
  • Electromagnetism

2021


Fall

  • Experimental Methods

Spring

  • Astrophysics of Galaxies
  • Electromagnetism

2020


Fall

  • Experimental Methods

Spring

  • Numerical Methods for Science & Engineering

Contact me