Dr. Johannes Sahlmann, an instrument support scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, visited our group early last week. Part of his visit was to support his collaboration on the data analysis pipeline for the Aperture Masking Interferometry (AMI) mode on NIRISS. Johannes is involved in helping to understand and predict performance with AMI preceding the first JWST data. He is working closely with Alexandra to improve the data pipeline and set up simulations ahead of the real calibration data. The pipeline is being developed as a community tool.

Artist impression of Gaia. Copyright: ESA/ATG medialab from http://sci.esa.int/gaia/28820-summary/

Johannes also gave a talk at the Stars, Planets, and Formation group, describing his work combining high precision astrometry with radial velocities and imaging. Of particular interest was Gaia performance on nearby stars (in which Johannes has had an important role) and the timeline for obtaining a new sample of astrometry-detected planets with Gaia. He concluded by looking ahead to how Gaia will help prepare target lists for WFIRST direct imaging observations and for other future missions.

Christoph Baranec, faculty at the University of Hawaii, visited our department this week to speak about his work with robotic adaptive optics (Robo-AO), an automated adaptive optics system. Robo-AO can operate without human supervision and perform the wavefront corrections necessary to mitigate fluctuations in the atmosphere and sharpen the image. The reliability and streamlined software architecture of Robo-AO makes it extremely efficient for surveying many targets per night. Lessons learned from the Robo-AO project could be used to automate other Laser AO systems, or improve performance of extreme-AO instruments.

A photo by the Robo-AO team of their UV laser used to measure the atmospheric fluctuation. The laser is not actually visible to the naked eye but was taken with a digital camera that had its UV filter removed, as Christoph explained during the beginning of his talk. Photo credit: Robo-AO team.

Photographer and astronomer, Stephen Strom, looks at our planet with a unique vision. New York born, Stephen received his Masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University, and had an long and prestigious career beginning as Lecturer in Astronomy at Harvard and Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and continuing on as Chairman of the Five College Astronomy Department at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. In 1998 Stephen moved to Tucson as a member of the scientific staff at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory where he carried out research directed at understanding the formation of stars and planetary systems.  He presented a lecture entitled “A Fusion of Art and Astronomy” in Angel Hall on the central campus of the University of Michigan Friday, 7 April.  This event was part of Statewide Astronomy Night, in conjunction with the Michigan State University Science Festival.  Steve was a guest of our group, and in residence in the Department of Astronomy the entire week.  We look forward to his next visit.