Research

My primary work studies how giant planets form and how observations can constrain the formation of these objects. I’ve particular focused on the late stages of their formation when they are surrounded by a circumplanetary disk. I’m interested in building physical models that both provide insight into the relevant processes and that can be used to fit observations in the near future.

In my work so far, I have constructed semi-analytic models for the structure of the disk and evelope of these planets (Taylor and Adams 2024) and calculated the spectral signatures predicted by these models (Taylor and Adams 2025). I then developed a two-dimensional numerical model for circumplanetary disks (Taylor, Adams, and Calvet 2026) and found that these disks are geometrically thick, which significantly impacts the radiative signatures.

I am currently working to develop a semianalytic model that accurately matches the structure and radiative signatures of these geometrically thick disks. These models are used to fit synthetic to determine what information about the planetary system is contained in each wavelength band. I also fit these models to existing observations, with important implications for the accretion history of these giant planets. This paper is currently in the late stages of preparation.

I study interstellar objects as probes of planet formation outside the Solar System. While these objects cannot be identified with a specific planetary system, the population of interstellar objects traces the history of planet formation throughout the Galaxy.

Although I originally began working on 1I/`Oumuamua, most of my recent work has centered on 3I/ATLAS (Seligman et al. 2025). I have been involved with critical work using the composition (Salazar Manzano et al. 2025) and thermal evolution of this object (Yaginuma, Taylor, and Seligman 2026) to understand the formation history of this object.

Most importantly, I used this object’s kinematics to constrain the age and formation history of this object (Taylor and Seligman 2025). This work also demonstrated that the total age distribution of interstellar objects can be used to investigate the formation rate of interstellar objects throughout Galactic history. This property is closely related to the formation rate of giant planets and other planetary systems throughout the Galaxy. While the current sample size is small, I was able to show that the ages of the three known interstellar objects is inconsistent with a flat formation history. As more interstellar objects are discovered, I am excited to use this technique to further investigate the formation history of planetary systems.

I am also involved in trying to understand the mysterious “dark comets” (Seligman et al. 2023), which are near-Earth objects that look inactive but show clear nongravitational accelerations. I am especially interested in understanding the origins of these accelerations and what they can tell us about the volatile content of the solar system.

Although the origin of these accelerations remains unknown, I have shown that seasonally varying outgassing can reproduce the observed acceleration vectors for many dark comets (Taylor et al. 2024a). I then investigated the origins of these objects, and showed that a rotational fragmentation cascade explains most of their unique properties (Taylor et al. 2024b). This work also looked into the dynamics of these objects and predicted that these objects fall into two different populations, which was then confirmed by Seligman et al. (2024).

I went on to show that the nongravitational accelerations of these objects may make it difficult to identify these objects and detect their nongravitational accelerations (Taylor et al. 2024c). This result will become especially relevant as LSST discovers many more near-Earth objects.

I am now working with Luis Salazar Manzano to further characterize these objects. I am especially interested in these objects’ compositions, which may provide clues concerning volatile abundances in the inner solar system and the origin of the Earth’s water.

In addition to my secular scientific work, I am also deeply interested in the intersections between astronomy and halakha, or Jewish law. In the Jewish conception, the day ends at ‘nightfall’, which is defined to mean when one can see ‘three medium stars at once place in the sky’. The exact time of nightfall is extremely religiously important, since it defines the restrictions that Jews live under. For example, a Jew must not work between sunset on Friday and nightfall on Saturday. Historically, this time has been approximated by calculating when the Sun is a certain number of degrees below the horizon. However, this is only an approximation of when the requisite stars will become visible.

Using modern astronomical techniques, I have calculated when the conditions for nightfall are reached at several locations on Earth. I have compared these times to the historical approximations, and found that the approximations are generally off by several minutes. I have also shown that light pollution has a significant impact on the time of nightfall. In major cities such as New York, nightfall never occurs throughout much of the year! While these results present serious halakhic challenges, I have created a tool (accessible here) that can calculate the nightfall time at any location and date on Earth.

The paper discussing this work is currently under review at the journal Masorti.