- Education
- I earned Bachelors (1973)
and Masters (1974) [thesis] degrees in
Planetary Science from
M.I.T.,
- Work
- After I got my SM degree, I took some enforced time off from astronomy
due to a lack of jobs and developed financial software in Boston at
Financial
Publishing Company in 1975 and 1976, while still doing some work
at MIT helping write
my first published paper on Martian surface composition).
- In 1976, I left to develop astronomical software full-time, in lieu
of graduate school, at
Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York from 1976
until 1979, soon
helping discover the Uranian rings and publishing
my second paper in Nature. More research and publication followed
through the 1979 move of my research group to M.I.T., where I worked until 1984.
- In 1984, I came to the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to work on the
Spacelab 2
Infrared Telescope, eventually co-authoring
this paper about its results. Along the way, I developed the graphics
terminal emulator for xterm
I am in the list of contributors at the end of the xterm man page on any
X-Window supporting system
(
xterm.1 man page).
-
Since that project was completed in 1990, I have worked at the
SAO Telescope Data Center,
developing and using software for
astrometry and the
reduction,
analysis, and
of optical and near-infrared spectra and images. Besides a few more pipelines
for spectrographs, I have written the widely-used
RVSAO redshift
computation package
and
WCSTools image world coordinate system, FITS file, and source catalog package.
-
In June 2021, I summarized my entire career in a talk to the Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomical Society.
Here's their announcement with links to the PDF and the hour-long Zoom talk.
-
This talk
summarizes the work I've done in positional astronomy over four decades.
-
This talk
summarizes the data processing pipelines which have kept me employed for over
four decades.
-
This page
explains why there is a different name on my papers before 2011.
- Professional interests
- Managing and making available archives of astronomical data
- Astronomical data formats,
Sky coordinates,
catalogs, and
images:
WCSTools
(scat) and
SAOimage
-
Astronomical Image Databases
- Celestial cartography
(SKYMAP)
and mapping in general
- Stellar and galactic radial velocities
(RVSAO)
-
Occultations of stars by solar system objects
- Scanning astronomical photographic plates
- Outer solar system objects (
Pluto/Charon,
satellites, Kuiper belt, etc.)
- Working on a bunch of papers on
astronomy and astronomical software.
- Member of the
International Astronomical Union
Chair of the IAU Working Group on Astronomical Data Formats (2018-)
- Member of the
American Astronomical Society
AAS Division for Planetary Sciences
AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy,
Webmaster(1997-2012) and committee member(1997-1999)
AAS Historical Astronomy Division,
AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (2015-2024)
AAS Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender-Identity Minorities in Astronomy) (2015-2021)
- On the Advisory Committee of the
Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) (2012-2018)
- On the Scientific Organizing Committee for
Inclusive Astronomy 2015,
which wrote up
The Nashville Recommendations
- On the elected SAO Council from 2020-2023 where I worked with
others to draft a Expectations of
Conduct for all of the people at the Center for Astrophysics.
- Like all astronomers, I worry constantly about the
weather.
- Developer of software in
C,
Perl,
Fortran,
but no longer in my favorite,
PL/I
- Publications
- Other interests
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Here are some talks I've given:
- Developing and Maintaining Shared Astronomical Software Packages
[Presentation]
[Proceedings Paper]
(October 7, 2019: ADASS XXIX in Groningen, Netherlands)
- Pipelines: Forty-Five Years of Turning Data Into Science
[Presentation]
MIT Planetary Astronomy Laboratory 50th Anniversary, April 17, 2018, Cambridge, MA
- WCSTools: How I Found My Place in the Universe (and helped everybody else find theirs)
[Presentation]
American Museum of Natural History, April 13, 2015, New York, NY
[Presentation]
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, May 6, 2015, Cambridge, MA
[Sermon]
Theodore Parker Church, May 17, 2015, West Roxbury, MA
- World Coordinate Systems and Me
[Presentation]
Jimboree in honor of Professor James Elliot, MIT, June 17, 2010, Cambridge, MA
- Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems Conference Summaries for the Center for Astrophysics
ADASS XX: In Boston November 19, 2010
ADASS XV: Will the Old Systems Be Reborn in the Virtual Observatory? October 20, 2005
[PDF]
ADASS XIV: Dealing with Petabytes of Data November 5, 2004
ADASS XIII: The Afterlife of Astronomical Data November 6, 2003
- Digitizing the Harvard Plate Stacks (putting WCSTools to work)
[Presentation] CfA OIR Lunch, October 31, 2002
Plate stack project home page
- LGBTQ in Astronomy
Post-Publication Name Changes
Making Astronomy More LGBTQ-Friendly
Center For Astrophysics Equity and Inclusion Journal Club, July 27, 2020
Inclusive Astronomy + 4: A Unified Approach to Removing Barriers
Center For Astrophysics Equity and Inclusion Journal Club, March 1, 2019
LGBTQ Careers in Astronomy
NOGLSTP Out to Innovate, March, 2017
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