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Yale University Astronomy Department Newsletter Vol. 3 Fall 2011 No. 1 Yale joins Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Yale is now a fully participating member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Collaboration. Although Yale was not a member during the first two phases of SDSS, the suc- cess of SDSS and the excitement of Yale astronomers about the projects and data of SDSS-III led Yale to join now. Based on citations in refereed articles and meeting abstracts, SDSS has been rated as the telescope project with the biggest sci- entific impact in history, beating out even the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescopes (c.f. Madrid, Juan P. and Macchetto, Duccio 2009arXiv0901.4552M). The previous incarnations of SDSS have imaged 13,000 square degrees, corresponding to about a third of the en- tire sky. SDSS-III is taking spectra of interesting objects that were found in these images, through a program of four sur- veys that cover three scientific themes. The Baryon Oscil- lation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) studies dark energy and the geometry of space. (SEE SDSS-III, p. 4) SDSS-III Data Release 8 image from January 2011 Gruber Foundation formed at Yale with prizes and fellowships in astronomy and cosmology In May of 2011, Patricia and Peter Gruber officially formed the Gruber Founda- tion at Yale University, dedicated to the advancement of science, support of young scientists, global justice, and women’s rights. The Gruber Foundation at Yale will succeed The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, originally estab- lished in 1993, and carry on its philanthropic mission, including its prestigious annual science prizes. It will encompass three major programmatic initiatives: the Gruber Prizes and the Young Scientists Awards; the Gruber Science Fellow- ship Program at Yale; and the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale Law School. Yale astronomy and astrophysics will benefit from two of these programs. The Gruber Foundation will continue to award three $500,000 Gruber Prizes each year in the physical and life sciences, including a Cosmology Prize, a Ge- netics Prize, and a Neuroscience Prize; as well as the Gruber Young Scientists Awards. Considered among the most prestigious awards in the sciences, the prizes honor contemporary individuals whose (SEE GRUBER, p. 8) INSIDE THIS ISSUE Greetings from the Chair 2 New and Retiring Faculty and Staff 14 Science News 3 Awards and Honors 17 Department Research Programs and Facilities 6 Recent Graduates 19 Public Outreach 11 In Memoriam 21 People 14 Alumni News 22 1 Greetings from the Chair The 2010-11 academic ary for many things, including his teaching of two key year was a busy one courses for much of his time at Yale. How many of you for Astronomy, with reading this have taken Astronomy 310: “Galactic and 10 new postdocs and 5 Extragalactic Astronomy” or Astronomy 360/560: “The new graduate students Interstellar Medium and Star Formation” from Rich- joining the department. ard? While it’s true that with his retirement he won’t It was also the first full be teaching or going to faculty meetings (unless he re- year in New Haven ally wants to), we would be more upset if we thought for new faculty mem- Richard was actually going to change much. We hope bers Debra Fischer and and think that Richard will be an active scientist in the Frank van den Bosch Department for many more years. (see p. 14). All that has happened in the past year has a shadow With all of the new cast over it by the tragic death of Michelle Dufault (see people in the depart- p. 21), an Astrophysics major in her senior year, only ment, as well as new weeks from graduation. Michelle was a remarkably tal- Photo by Michael Marsland laboratory and remote ented and giving person, someone who elevated those observing facilities, the around her. It is hard to find words for something so need for space has never been greater. As a result, the sad, but we are consoled a bit by the thought that her Astronomy Department is no longer contained by the memory will inspire those who knew her or learn second floor of Gibbs, and we have now spilled onto the about her. first and fourth floors of Gibbs. The Astronomy Depart- ment now controls much of the space on the first floor, This is my last newsletter as Chair, and as I start my previously occupied by the Shared Sciences Support sabbatical I leave things in the very capable hands of Group. Professor Debra Fischer’s lab, the Yale Doppler our new chair Pieter van Dokkum. Good luck Pieter! Diagnostic Facility (see p. 6), is located on the first floor, along with a large “modern” office for her postdocs and students. There is also a large conference room, Newsletter Editorial Staff the new undergraduate computer room and the gradu- ate student lounge. The fourth floor, controlled by the Physics Department, is the home of the new Keck Re- Editor-in-Chief: Jeff Kenney mote Observing Room (see p. 7). It may seem strange to have such growth during a bad economy, but much of Editor: Victoria Gardner this is the result of actions taken before the downturn. Writers: Victoria Gardner We have been delighted by the success of our public Jeff Kenney outreach programs at Leitner Family Observatory and Nicole Whitcher Planetarium, led by Michael Faison and Heidi Herrick (see p. 11). Since the planetarium opened and we be- Graphic Design: Victoria Gardner gan programs for public school children, the number of public visitors has grown dramatically, and we can- Photography: Zachary Kenney not always meet the demand. We view inspiring young Nicole Whitcher minds about science as enormously beneficial to soci- Others as credited ety. So we hope to continue these important outreach efforts, but in order to do so we will need to find fund- ing! Please consider us! Please send your comments, suggestions and news to: The Astronomy Department reached a milestone this Editor past year with the retirement of Prof. Richard Larson Astronomy Newsletter (see p. 15). Richard is rightly considered to be one of the Yale University “giants” in modern astronomy for his many contribu- P.O. Box 208101 tions over the last 40+ years in the fields of star forma- New Haven, CT 06520-8101 tion and galaxy evolution. On a local level he is legend- [email protected] 2 CHIRON searches for Earth-like planets Yale astronomer Debra Fischer is leading several exoplanet searches with her team of researchers, dubbed the Yale Exo- planet Lab. One of these surveys is a search for low mass planets around stars in the binary system Alpha Centauri A and B. Fischer chose the Alpha Centauri system because these stars are the Sun’s closest neighbors. These stars also have other properties that make them ideal for discover- ing low-mass exoplanets, including: brightness of the stars (which allows for short exposure times), low chromospheric activity (which minimizes periodic noise), high metallicity (which provides raw materials for rocky planet formation), and a nearly edge-on orbital inclination for maximum Dop- pler amplitude. Fischer has been looking at Alpha Centauri A and B with the SMARTS 1.5m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) since 2007. In order to carry this out, Kepler 11 exoplanetary system. Image courtesy of NASA/Kepler. the team needed a precision spectrometer. The team initial- ly refurbished a decommissioned Echelle spectrometer from proved precision and efficiency of CHIRON, the team has the Blanco telescope at CTIO. However, the instrument was expanded their survey to a set of 100 stars in the southern not stable enough, so Fischer applied for funding to build a hemisphere. new spectrometer. Yale exoplanet team members, Christian Schwab and Julien Spronck worked with Andrei Tokivinen Matt Giguere, a PhD student who is leading the data analysis at CTIO to design and build a stable new fiber-fed spectrom- for the CHIRON exoplanet search, said that most of the exo- eter, the CTIO High Resolution Spectrometer (CHIRON). planets that have been detected so far are gas giants, which have dense cores with masses thirty times of the earth or CHIRON was commissioned in March of 2011 and can mea- more and have mostly Hydrogen and Helium in their atmo- sure changes in stellar velocities with a precision of one me- spheres. Low mass planets are much more difficult to de- ter per second, critical for searching for low-mass planets. tect, but they are important both because learning properties If a star has orbiting planets, those planets will tug the star of low mass planets can constrain planet formation theories around a common center of mass. The changes in stellar and because low mass planets are the most likely candidates velocities due to the tug of the planets can therefore be used for hosting life (as we currently know it) in the Universe. to infer the presence of planets orbiting a star. With the im- Giguere also said that the frequency of low-mass planets is not well known and various planet formation theories predict different frequencies of low mass planets. Further- more, the results to date from Kepler and other radial veloc- ity planet searches differ widely in their values for the fre- quency of low mass planets. In addition, observations have recently shown that systems with low mass planets tend to have several planets. By adding an independent assessment for the frequency of low mass planets, the CHIRON planet search should be able to help determine the true frequency of low-mass planets and thereby help constrain how planet formation occurs.
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