ASTRONOMY
DEPARTMENT AND THE HOPKINS OBSERVATORY
Faculty included Jay M. Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor and Chair;
Marek Demianski, Visiting Professor of Astronomy; and Steven Souza, Instructor
in Astronomy and Observatory Supervisor. Karen B. Kwitter, Ebenezer Fitch
Professor of Astronomy, was on sabbatical leave though resident in
Williamstown.
The Department graduated four astrophysics majors in June 2005: Ryan
Carollo ’05, Zophia Edwards ’05, Kamen Kozarev ’05, and
Terry-Ann Suer ’05. Kamen was elected to Sigma Xi and graduated with
honors in Astrophysics. Senior astronomy majors are Alan Cordova ’06 and
Yariv Pierce ’06 and senior astrophysics majors are David Butts ’06,
Joseph Gangestad ‘06, and Owen Westbrook ’06. Suranjit
Tilakawardane and Megan Bruck enrolled as astronomy and astrophysics majors,
respectively, in the class of 2007.
The total solar eclipse of April 8, 2005, from a ship in mid-Pacific Ocean
1000 km west of the Galápagos. (photo by Jay Pasachoff and Dava
Sobel)
Demianski taught a seminar in relativistic astrophysics, including black
holes and cosmology, and a sophomore course in compact stellar objects,
including pulsars and black holes. Pasachoff taught a seminar, for the second
time, on science and pseudoscience, framed around C. P. Snow’s concept of
the “two cultures.” Faculty guest seminar leaders included
professors William Lenhart (Computer Science) on the visual display of
information, Richard De Veaux (Mathematical and Statistical Sciences) on use and
misuse of statistics, Steven Gerrard (Philosophy) on alternative medicine,
Norman J. Levitt (Mathematics, Rutgers University) on the Sokal hoax, Stuart J.
B. Crampton (Physics, emeritus) on science and religion, and Lois Banta
(Biology) on GM foods. Regular courses included the survey on stars and stellar
evolution in the fall, the survey of galaxies and cosmology in the spring, and
introductory astrophysics in the fall.
Pasachoff continued his studies of the solar chromosphere. Using a Guest
Investigator grant from NASA, Pasachoff and his students reduced the data about
the chromosphere at high resolution taken on an observing run with the Swedish
Solar Telescope on La Palma in conjunction with NASA’s Transition Region
and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. David Butts ’06 and Kamen
Kozarev ’05 worked on the data during the summer of 2004, and Kozarev
continued on the project for his senior thesis. The group presented a paper in
a symposium on the chromosphere held at the Solar Physics Division of the
American Astronomical Society in May 2005 in New Orleans. The paper was in
conjunction with Bart De Pontieu of Lockheed Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory,
who had participated in the observing run, with Leon Golub and Ed DeLuca of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who built the telescope for the
TRACE spacecraft, and with Kurt Wilhelm and Ingolf Dammasch, who are working on
additional simultaneous data with the SUMER instrument on the European Space
Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Owen Westbrook
’06 will participate on the project during the summer of 2005 and for his
senior thesis, including a further observing run at La Palma in August 2005. He
received a fellowship from NASA through the Massachusetts Space Grant.
Pasachoff continued his studies of solar eclipses. He observed a partial
solar eclipse from Hawaii in October. Joined by Shelby Kimmel ’08, he
observed the total solar eclipse of 8 April 2005 from the ship Galápagos
Legend 1000 miles west of the Galápagos Islands. Images from eclipse
observations appear at
<www.williams.edu/astronomy/eclipse>.
Pasachoff is continuing planning for a major expedition to observe the
total solar eclipse of 29 March 2006, in collaboration with Bryce Babcock,
Coordinator of Science Facilities and Staff Physicist, and Souza. Several
students will participate on site in Kastellorizo, Greece.
Pasachoff continues his work on the atmospheres of Pluto, its moon Charon,
and other objects in the outer solar system. His local collaborators are again
Babcock and Souza. The project is a joint collaboration with James Elliot,
Amanda Gulbis, and Michael Person of MIT. Together, the scientists had received
a NASA equipment grant to purchase four new electronic cameras capable of high
sensitivity, rapid cadence, and minimal dead time between exposures, leading
eventually to the choice of Andor CCD cameras, two for MIT and two for Williams.
In the course of the year, Pasachoff received a NASA Planetary Astronomy
research grant to cover other aspects of the project, including foreign and
domestic travel. Joined by Joseph Gangestad ’06, who will write his
senior thesis on the topic, Pasachoff, Babcock, and Souza observed an
occultation of a star by Charon from telescopes in Chile and Brazil for 10/11
July 2005.
Pasachoff has been participating in studies of the double star cluster h
and chi Persei, tracing back to optical observations made by Christina Reynolds
’97 and Rebecca Cover ’00, related to x-ray observations. In this
collaboration with Nancy Evans, Scott Wolk, Fred Seward, and others at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, observations of the cluster were
obtained at two pointings with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in November 2004.
Megan Bruck ’06 is working on the data during the summer of 2005, spending
time in both Cambridge and in Williamstown.
Zophia Edwards ’05 worked with Pasachoff on compositing images of the
2002 and 2005 total solar eclipses. Jennifer Yee, a Keck Summer Fellow from
Swarthmore, and Anna Tsykalova ’08, are working further with these
data.
Pasachoff continues work on the observations of the 8 June 2004 transit of
Venus, the first to occur since the year 1882. In collaboration with Glenn
Schneider of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona and Richard
Willson of Columbia University, he used observations from NASA’s ACRIMSAT
with its monitor of the total solar irradiance to observe the drop of 0.1% in
the solar constant because of the transit, a close-to-Earth analogue of the
transits by extrasolar planets of their parent stars that are increasingly
observed. Terry-Ann Suer ’05 and Alan Cordova ’06 worked on images
of the transit taken by Butts, Gangestad, and Westbrook at the observing site in
Thessaloniki, Greece. Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Summer Fellow Kayla
Gaydosh from Bryn Mawr College participated in the expedition and in the
summer’s research.
Suer worked with Pasachoff and T. Chandrasekhar of the Physical Research
Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India, on Fabry-Perot high-resolution observations of a
solar eclipse. She used the computer system IDL to produce over 500 scans at
different angles of an eclipse image, which is being analyzed to reveal coronal
velocities. Suer worked with Pasachoff on historical studies of the origin and
diffusion of the K-line notation in 19th-century astronomical
spectroscopy.
Pasachoff continued to work with Donald Lubowich of Hofstra University on a
variety of projects dealing with cosmic deuterium and its use for cosmological
studies. They had observing time during the year with a Steward Observatory
12-m radio telescope on Kitt Peak and with the 330-m radio telescope at Arecibo,
the latter as tests for subsequent longer observations at the fundamental
spin-flip line of deuterium. Suer assembled a Web page linking most previous
fundamental articles in the field; it is on a Williams College server and is
accessible at
<www.cosmicdeuterium.info/>.
Pasachoff continues his collaboration with Roberta J. M. Olson of the
New-York Historical Society on issues on the overlap between art and astronomy,
concentrating on images of comets and of eclipses. He began the revision of his
text
The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, working with Alex
Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley, to prepare the third
edition (Brooks/Cole Publishing Company,
<info.brookscole.com/pasachoff>).
After 42 years of service from an old Spitz planetarium projector, the
Milham Planetarium of the Hopkins Observatory, of which Pasachoff is Director,
was able to install a new Zeiss Skymaster ZKP3/B opto-mechanical planetarium
projector. The old projector was removed in late March by Steven Pielock of Old
Deerfield, Massachusetts, and the new projector was installed over a two-week
period in April by Gerhard Plötner of Zeiss, Jena, Germany. The projector
includes many improved features, including gearing and projection of planetary
positions, projection of constellation outlines, and smooth, reliable operation
with images of several thousand stars, the coolest ones shown by their reddish
color. The planetarium was made possible by the Class of 1958 President’s
Fund for Faculty Development, arranged with the support of President Morton Owen
Schapiro, Provost Catharine Hill, Acting Dean of Faculty William Lenhart, and
others of the Senior Staff.
The planetarium was demonstrated to students in ASTR 104 and ASTR 336 at
the end of the semester, and it had its formal opening in a demonstration to
alumni on June 9 during the reunion week, and to alumni children and others on
June 11. David Ticehurst ’04 has been joined by all the summer students
to learn how to use the planetarium and to give shows during the summer of 2005,
with a legacy of separate shows for later use with audiences of different age
distributions. An Ansible digital planetarium, projecting a variety of
astronomical images horizontally into a 4-foot dome, has been under development
as part of the planetarium project, and is being installed.
During the year, the Hopkins Observatory presented planetarium shows on
Friday evenings entitled “Transits of Venus: So Rare, So Wonderful.”
Shows were designed and given by students Ryan Carollo ’05, Megan Bruck
’07, Yariv Pierce ’07, and Matthew Summers ’07 with
Pasachoff.
With the recognition of this public outreach, Pasachoff received a grant
for Education and Public Outreach from NASA to hold a yearly series of three
teachers’ workshop for public-school teachers from Williamstown and
Pittsfield. In collaboration with Shawn Burdick of Mt. Greylock Regional High
School, Mary Kavanaugh and Jennifer Swoap of the Williamstown Elementary School,
and Patrick Markham of the Pittsfield Public Schools, the workshops are to take
place during each winter for approximately a dozen teachers. A theme will be
the outer planets, given the NASA grants grounding in Pasachoff’s research
grant from NASA for studies of Pluto and other objects in the outer solar
system.
Pasachoff continues as Chair of the Working Group on Solar Eclipses of the
International Astronomical Union. As such, he participated in the proposing of
symposia for the year 2006, and he is on the Scientific Organizing Committee for
the selected proposal on the role of magnetic fields in the corona, to be held
in Cairo the first week in April 2006. The Working Group’s Web page is at
<www.totalsolareclipse.net/>.
Pasachoff continues as President of the International Astronomical
Union’s Commission on Education and Development. He is on the Scientific
Organizing Committee and participated in the proposals for two Special Sessions
on education, in collaboration with Rosa Ros of Universitat Politécnica
de Catalunya in Barcelona, and astronomy in developing countries, in
collaboration with John Hearnshaw of Canterbury University in New Zealand,
respectively, during the IAU’s General Assembly to be held in Prague,
Czech Republic, during August 14-25, 2006. He arranged for the
Commission’s Web page, based with B. W. Jones and T. J. Moore of the Open
University, Milton Keynes, U.K., to be available through
<www.astronomyeducation.org/>. Pasachoff is also United
States National Liaison to the Commission. During this year, Pasachoff worked
on the manuscript for which he is co-author with John Percy of the University of
Toronto of a book derived from the proceedings of a Special Session held at the
2003 Sydney, Australia, IAU General Assembly. Entitled “Astronomy
Teaching and Learning: Effective Strategies for Educators Worldwide,” it
is to be published by Cambridge University Press.
Pasachoff continues as astronomy consultant for the
McGraw-Hill
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology and its yearbooks. He also continues
on the Physical Science Board of
World Book. He is on the Council of
Advisors of the
Astronomy Education Review electronic journal. See
<aer.noao.edu/>. Pasachoff
continues as science book reviewer for
The Key Reporter, the Phi Beta
Kappa newsletter. He continues as advisor to the children’s magazine
Odyssey.
Kwitter, Pasachoff, and Souza attended the Keck Northeast Astronomy
Consortium Student Symposium at Colgate University in October 2004. Williams
had hosted the KNAC faculty meeting the previous summer.
Kwitter was on leave in residence in 2004-2005. She spent time learning
about the capabilities and discoveries of the Spitzer Space Telescope infrared
observatory, attending The Spitzer Space Telescope: New Views of the
Cosmos meeting at Caltech in November 2004. She reviewed papers for several
astronomy journals, and continued as a member of the Space Sciences Panel
of the National Research Council’s associateship review program which vets
post-doctoral applications at national research centers. In May, Kwitter was
re-elected to a second three-year term on the Observatories Council of
AURA, Inc., the organization that oversees the national observatories for the
NSF.
During the summer of 2004, Joseph Gangestad ’06 worked with Kwitter
on assembling spectroscopic data for use in her Hubble Space Telescope project
with collaborators Dick Henry (Oklahoma) and Reggie Dufour (Rice) to understand
carbon abundances in planetary nebulae. They are analyzing emission from
doubly-ionized carbon that occurs in the ultraviolet, and trying to correlate it
with emission from doubly-ionized oxygen, easily seen in the visible spectrum.
If successful, oxygen emission may be able to serve as a reliable indicator of
carbon emission. In October 2004, Kwitter hosted a mini-workshop in
Williamstown for Henry and Dufour to work on the analysis of the Hubble data and
to plan for publication and a follow-up proposal.
In the summer of 2005, Jesse Levitt ’08 and Matthew Johnson (Wesleyan
’06) Keck Summer fellow, worked with Kwitter to study abundances in a set
of planetary nebulae that come from more massive progenitor stars. In
particular, they will be looking for enhancements in the nitrogen and helium
abundances and depressions in the oxygen abundance as indications of the nuclear
processing that occurs in these stars. These students also worked on updating
and adding to Kwitter and Henry’s web page of planetary nebula spectra (
http://oit.williams.edu/nebulae/).
Kwitter also worked on revamping her course Between the Stars: The
Interstellar Medium (ASTR 402), incorporating the newly available infrared,
x-ray and ultraviolet as well as optical archives from space missions and
massive ground-based surveys.
Souza conducts the department’s observing program, offering nighttime
and solar observing experiences for introductory and advanced students. He
supervises 8 to 10 observing TAs, and trains them in the use of the observatory
facilities. Once again, he hosted numerous visiting individuals and groups,
including planetarium groups, alumni, visiting classes from local schools,
Family Weekend attendees, student previews and prospective students, and
visitors for the lunar eclipse of October 2004. Souza continues to maintain and
improve the observatory’s instrumentation and facilities. He acts as
liaison between the department and B&G on physical plant issues, including
campus lighting.
Souza teaches all laboratory sections in introductory courses, and conducts
all daytime observing. He continues the process of revising or replacing
laboratory exercises using new software and other resources. In January 2005,
he served as unofficial advisor to a group of students undertaking a WSP 99 on
“applied aerodynamics” (building and flying a radio controlled model
airplane).
In 2004-2005, Souza participated in several observations and astronomical
events. He traveled to Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona in August 2004
to work with Kwitter and Dr. R. Henry (Univ. of Oklahoma) on spectroscopy of
planetary nebulae. He prepared the Williams College imaging experiment,
designed to complement observations made by the SOHO spacecraft, for the April
2005 eclipse viewed by Pasachoff and first-year student Shelby Kimmel from a
ship in the Pacific Ocean.
In a far-greater-than-expected undertaking, Souza, Babcock, and Pasachoff
worked with the MIT occultation team headed by Dr. James Elliot to choose the
best possible camera system for purchase under a NASA occultation equipment
grant. As a result, we acquired two state-of-the-art astronomical cameras,
along with computers and ancillary equipment, that were used for observations in
Chile and Brazil of the occultation of a 15th magnitude star by
Pluto’s satellite Charon in July 2005.
Souza continues to develop the departmental computing environment, using
Mac OS X for Mac and UNIX applications. He set up a server to provide common
user authentication and data storage (with backup) for Mac OS/UNIX machines
hosting IRAF and IDL. In particular, he set up computing environments for
students working on data from spacecraft and ground-based observatories for
various projects of Pasachoff. He acts as liaison with OIT, and represents
astronomy in thrice-yearly “Sci-Tech” meetings. He has begun the
long process of reorganizing the Astronomy Department website.
ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIA
[Colloquia are held jointly with Physics. See Physics
section for additional listings.]
Dr. Arthur Cole, Michigan State University, National Superconducting
Cyclotron Lab, Class of 1960 Scholars Program
“The Search for Supernova Signatures in an Ice Core”
Dr. Jay
M. Pasachoff, Williams College, Astronomy Dept.
“American Planetariums and Our New Zeiss Projector”
ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT STUDENT COLLOQUIA
Joseph Shoer ’06, Joseph Gangestad ’06, David Butts
‘06
“Exploring Practical Aerodynamics”
ON-CAMPUS FACULTY PRESENTATIONS
Steven P. Souza
“Image processing in Astronomy”
lunchtime seminar,
sponsored by OIT, December 2004
“Images in Medicine and
Astronomy”
guest lecture in Structuring Your Novel (ENGL 019),
January 2005
“Properties of Digital Images”
guest lecture in
Electron Microscopy (BIOL 010), January 2005
OFF-CAMPUS FACULTY PRESENTATIONS
Jay M. Pasachoff
“Education in Astronomy”
European Astronomical Society,
Granada, Spain
“Transits of Venus”
Royal Astronomical Society meeting,
London
Pasachoff, J. M., G. Schneider, and R.C. Willson
“The Effect of the Transit of Venus on ACRIM’s Total Solar
Irradiance Measurements”
January 2005 AAS meeting, San Diego, CA,
135.11; Bull. Am. Astron. Soc., 36, #5, 1566
Lubowich, D. A.,
N. Kuno, H. Roberts, T. J. Millar, C. Henkel, J. M. Pasachoff, and R.
Mauersberger
“Deuterium Nucleosynthesis in AGN: Is D
Cosmological”
January 2005 AAS meeting, San Diego, CA, 118.07; Bull.
Am. Astron. Soc., 36, #5, 1546
Bizunok, N. S., N. R. Evans, S. J.
Wolk, B. Spitzbart, F. D. Seward, S. J. Kenyon, T. G. Barnes, and J. M.
Pasachoff
“The Open Cluster h Per as Seen by Chandra”
May-June 2005AAS
meeting, Minneapolis, MN, 36.04; Bull. Am. Astron. Soc., 37, #2,
488
OFF-CAMPUS STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
David Butts ’06, Kamen Kozarev ’05, Jay M. Pasachoff and Bart
De Pontieu of Lockheed Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory
Symposium on “New Frontiers in Understanding the Structure of the
Sun’s Chromosphere”
Solar Physics of the American Astronomical
Society in New Orleans, May 2005
David Butts ’06 and Kamen Kozarev
’05
“A Study of Limb Spicules with the Swedish Solar Telescope and
TRACE”
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Student Research Symposium,
October 2005
Kayla Gaydosh, Bryn Mawr ’05, Keck Northeast Astronomy
Consortium Summer Fellow
“From Venus with Love: The Transit of Venus 8 June
2004”
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Student Research Symposium,
October 2005
POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF DEPARTMENT MAJORS
Ryan A. Carollo Zophia Y. Edwards Kamen A. Kozarev Terry-Ann K.
Suer
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Teaching math & physics in Casablanca, Morocco Teaching at the
Trinity School, New York City Seeking employment Research Assistant,
Caltech
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