Leitner Family Donates Funds for a Planetarium at the Observatory
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Yale University Astronomy Department Newsletter Vol. 1 Fall 2008 No. 1 Big telescopes offered at Yale Yale reaches agreement with Caltech for access to Keck Telescopes in Hawaii Yale and Caltech have reached an ometry. Keck I began operating in agreement which will give Yale as- 1993, and Keck II followed in 1996. tronomers access to the telescopes Keck is operated jointly by Caltech of the Keck Observatory for the next and the University of California. ten years. In exchange for fifteen nights per year on the two Keck Keck Observatory has a full suite telescopes, Yale University will pay of world class instruments, and $1.2M per year to Caltech. This is the continues to develop new ones. largest single investment that Yale The DEIMOS optical multi-ob- has ever made for astronomy,and ject spectrograph is perhaps the is the latest example of Yale’s best such spectrograph in the commitment to the sciences. world, and the MOSFIRE multi- ROBERT BENSON PHOTOGRAPHY object IR spectrograph now un- Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium The Keck telescopes are the world’s der construction promises to largest, and the Keck Observatory be similarly outstanding. Keck is broadly considered (along with Observatory is a leader in adap- Leitner Family the European VLT) the pre-eminent tive optics (AO), and produced optical observatory in the world. the world’s first AO system on a donates funds for a large telescope. Keck’s present Keck Observatory is located at the AO system has higher resolution Planetarium at the summit of Mauna Kea, on the Big and greater sensitivity than the Island of Hawaii. Mauna Kea is gen- Hubble Space Telescope, and the erally recognized to be one of the capabilities of its Next Generation Observatory best telescope sites in the world, by Adaptive Optics System (NGAO) The Leitner Family Observatory and Plane- virtue of its 14,000-foot altitude and will exceed those of the next gen- tarium (LFOP) is the newest incarnation of the clear, calm, and dry skies. The ob- eration space telescope (JWST). tradition of Yale observatories, begun in 1830 servatory has twin 10-meter diam- with the Atheneum observatory and continu- eter telescopes which are normally The Keck Observatory has domi- ing through the previous observatory on top of operated independently, but can nated ground-based astronomy a Yale parking garage. In 2005, thanks to funds also be used together for interfer- (SEE KECK, p.4) donated by Mr. James Leitner (‘75 BA) and his wife, Sandra, a former carpentry shop located in INSIDE THIS ISSUE: the Farnham Memorial Gardens near the corner of Edwards and Prospect Streets in New Haven Greetings from the Chair 2 was turned into an observatory that is now ac- Science News 3 cessible to both students and the public. More Department Research Programs and Facilities 8 recently, the Leitners have donated funds to People 12 add a planetarium to the observatory, which is New Faculty 12 anticipated to be completed by January 2009. Retiring Faculty 13 Awards and Honors 14 In Memoriam 15 David Thompson is the architect for the project, Recent Graduates 17 which began in 2005 with the construction of two Alumni News 18 (SEE LFO, p.4) Yale Astronomy Books 20 1 Greetings from the Chair There is a lot to talk about Joint Program in Research and Education, an international since our last newsletter be- program which provides opportunities for graduate students cause...well.. this is our first and faculty from both Yale and Universidad de Chile, as well newsletter! Although we’ve as Yale undergraduate students. Our new summer astronomy been wanting to do this for course in Chile for Yale undergraduate non-majors is a big hit a while, we finally have a (thanks Professor Jose Maza!) which we hope to expand upon. staff person with the time and skills necessary to make We are enthusiastically awaiting the completion of the it happen (thanks Victoria!). Leitner Family Planetarium, which will soon join the I’ll try to focus on recent still-pretty-new Leitner Family Observatory on the Yale news and resist the urge to campus. These educational facilties are far superior than summarize everything that anything we’ve ever had (thanks Jim and Sandra Leit- has happened since 1701. ner!) and offer “hands-on” (“eyes-on”?) astronomy ex- We’ll try to do the newslet- periences for Yale undergraduates, both majors and non- ter on a regular basis, as it majors. We are now exploring ways to reach more K-12 is a great way to keep our public school children and the general public with LFOP. alumni friends informed. Classroom teaching is also changing, due to new technology We are living in an enormously exciting time in astronomy and research into effective teaching techniques. In some of and astrophysics. Over the last decade astronomers have our undergraduate classes, all the students use remote polling made fundamental discoveries about dark energy, dark mat- devices, which allow them to anonymously answer questions. ter, gamma ray bursts, the cosmic microwave background This makes class more interactive, and allows the instructor radiation,the early universe, galaxy formation and evolu- to immediately find out what the students are understanding. tion, black holes, and planets beyond our solar system. There are many new telescopes on earth and in space cov- One of our courses, “Frontiers and Controversies in As- ering most of the electromagnetic spectrum. More facili- trophysics”, taught by Prof. Charles Bailyn,’81 BS, is avail- ties are focused on the time domain, and huge amounts of able to the entire world via the internet. Recognizing the high quality data are available on the internet (thanks Al importance in society of both science and quantitative Gore!). At the same time, Yale is increasing its fo- reasoning (QR) (math and problem solving and quantita- cus on the sciences and making substantial new in- tive thinking), Yale now requires all undergraduates to vestments in scientific research and education. This take both Science and QR courses. We agree that this is all makes it a time of great change and opportunity! the right thing to do, and have devoted increased atten- tion to teaching QR skills in some of our non-major courses. In recent years, there has been increased astronomy activity at Yale beyond the Astronomy Department. In 2001 the Phys- The faculty ranks are changing as well. Pierre Demarque, ‘68 ics and Astronomy departments established the Yale Center MAH and Bill van Altena, ‘75 MAH claim to have retired in for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA) to help coordinate 2001 and 2007, respectively, but we haven’t yet seen real evi- astronomy activities and resources. The YCAA is directed by dence to support their claims. Sabatino Sofia ‘63 BS, ‘65 MS, Prof. Meg Urry, who is also currently the chair of the Physics ‘66 PhD is planning to retire at the end of this year, and is Department. (Please don’t tell the physicists that she is really looking forward to spending quality time with his research an astronomer!) In the newsletter, we will focus a bit more program relating solar variability to climate change on earth. on things centered in the Astronomy Department, but we New faculty since the start of the new century include Pieter will also include reports on astronomy activity in the Physics van Dokkum, Marla Geha, Hector Arce and Daisuke Na- Department, since in many ways there is no clear boundary gai. There’s a bit more about each of them in the newsletter. and many people have affiliations with both departments. While the rapid changes in the field require that the We are thrilled that Yale has committed $20M for telescopes Astronomy Department change in some ways, there over the next 10 years, including access to the Keck 10-me- are some things that will not change. One of these ter Telescopes, along with continued participation in the is our dedication to our students, and our desire to WIYN 3.5-meter and SMARTS 1m-class telescope consortia . help them prepare for their career or next stage of life. Yale has started to improve our access to high per- formance computing facilities, and we hope to We really enjoy hearing from our alumni, and make more progress here over the coming years. hope that you will let us know how you are doing! We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the Yale-Chile 2 BUT HOW ARE THEY SO SMALL? Dr. Pieter van Dokkum of the Yale Astronomy Department suggested van Dokkum, involves the interaction of dark mat- led a team of astronomers in discovering nine surprisingly ter and hydrogen gas in the nascent Universe. Dark matter is compact galaxies in the an invisible form of mat- distant past, using both ter that accounts for most NASA’s Hubble Space of the Universe’s mass. Telescope (HST) and the Shortly after the Big Bang, W.M. Keck Observatory the Universe contained (see also article on Yale an uneven landscape and Keck, p. 1) on Mauna of dark matter. Hydro- Kea, Hawaii. The galax- gen gas became trapped ies, whose light has trav- in pockets of the invis- eled for 11 billion years ible material and began before reaching Earth, spinning rapidly in dark are extremely small yet matter’s gravitational have a mass that exceeds whirlpool, forming stars that of the Milky Way. at a furious rate. Confir- mation of these theories Each of these galaxies might require measuring is only 5,000 light years the velocities of stars in across, but weigh about these compact galaxies; a 200 billion times the measurement that cannot mass of the Sun.