|
The CHARA Research Team and Collaboration
Georgia State faculty, research staff and graduate students associated with the CHARA Array as well as our collaborators at other institutions are listed here along with access to their personal or group web pages.
Bill Bagnuolo - Associate Professor - hot stars, irregular galaxies
Ellyn Baines - Post-Doctoral Research Associate - extrasolar planets, adaptive optics
Tabetha Boyajian - Graduate Research Assistant - stellar diameters
Theo ten Brummelaar - Associate Director - stellar interferometry, atmospheric turbulence theory
Larry Webster - Site Manager - keeping the operational wheels greased
Chris Farrington - Graduate Research Assistant & Array Operator - duplicity surveys
Doug Gies - Professor - Be star phenomena, hot stars, stellar winds
Steve Golden - Assistant Site Manager - keeping the operational wheels greased
P.J. Goldfinger - Interferometer Array Operator - keeping the data coming in
Sandy Land - Business Manager - keeping the financial wheels greased
Hal McAlister - Regents' Professor and Director - fundamental stellar properties
David O'Brien - Graduate Research Assistant - multiple star systems
Rob Parks - Graduate Research Assistant - RS CVn systems
Deepak Raghavan - Graduate Research Assistant - exoplanet systems, stellar multiplicity
Noel Richardson - Graduate Research Assistant - hot, massive stars
Steve Ridgway - Adjunct Professor - infrared astronomy, interferometry, stellar evolution
Judit Sturmann - Research Scientist - astronomical instrumentation, lunar occultations, optical interferometry
Laszlo Sturmann - Senior Research Scientist - astronomical instrumentation, lunar occultations, optical interferometry
Yamina Touhami - Graduate Research Assistant - Be stars, AGN
Nils Turner - Research Scientist - adaptive optics, optical and IR interferometry
CHARA has formal agreements with several institutions that are expanding the capabilities of the Array through additional beam combiners and complementary scientific expertise. These groups include:
The FLUOR Group is headed by Vincent du Foresto of the Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA) of l'Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France. FLUOR is a two-element beam combiner that provides high precision interferometric data used to measure stellar pulsations and probe the inner environments surrounding stars.
The SUSI Group, under the leadership of Peter Tuthill of the Institute of Astronomy, University of Sydney, Australia, operates the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer located at Narrabri in New South Wales where SUSI observations in the southern hemisphere can complement CHARA work in the north. A pair of Precision Astronomical Visible Observations (PAVO) instruments are being developed for installation at SUSI and at the CHARA Array in a collaboration involving Michael Ireland (Michelson Science Center, Caltech), Peter Tuthill (Sydney University) and Then ten Brummelaar (CHARA).
Astronomers from the Michelson Science Center operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, are using the CHARA Array for a variety of research interests. In return for this access, the MSC is providing complementary scientific and software expertise as well as additional on-site staffing for the Array.
The Michigan Infrared Beam Combiner (MIRC) has provided the first images ever obtained for a main sequence star other than the sun. This instrument, which combines light from four CHARA telescopes simultaneously, was developed by John Monnier and his optical interferometry group in the Astronomy Department of the University of Michigan. Dr. Monnier's team is also developing a fringe tracker for the Array.
The VEGA Group, with Denis Mourard as principal investigator, is located at the Laboratoire Gemini of l'Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, Nice, France. The VEGA instrument is now being installed at the CHARA Array and will provide interferometric capabilites at visible wavelengths including spectroscopic and polarimetric measurements at very high angular resolution.
|