Specialty areas:
Formation of stars, dark dust clouds, michelson interferometer array, and Allen telescope array
Research projects:
In collaboration with other researchers and students in the Radio
Astronomy Laboratory and Astronomers at the Universities of Maryland
and Illinois, we have developed a Michelson Interferometer Array for
millimeter wavelengths at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory of the
University of California, located near Mt. Lassen in the northern part
of the state. This instrument can form high-resolution images with good
spectral coverage of regions of star formation. What we "see" is
radiation emitted by trace chemicals in each dust cloud: HCN, CO, etc.
The pictures show remarkable objects and processes such as energetic
winds and outflows ejected from protostars and massive, rapidly
rotating gas clouds with disk shape that are probably the early stages
of star clusters. This instrument has operated as the Berkeley Maryland
Illinois Association Millimeter Array since 1988. At the present time,
this instrument is being combined with a similar array at Caltech which
will be located at Cedar Flats in the Into Mountains of southern
California. The new combined instrument will be known as CARMA. A new
activity at the Hat Creek Observatory in which I am involved is the
development of a novel large centimeter wavelength radio telescope, the
Allen Telescope Array. This instrument, a joint project with the SETI
Institute in Mountain View, will carry out sensitive studies of the ISM
and the distant universe, as well as searches for technological
evidence of complex life on other planets.
