Research
Spitzer First Look Survey
Ecliptic Plane Component
-- photometry
-- for collaborators
(password)
MIPS asteroids (password)
Serendipitous Asteroid
Search (password)
Jupiter's Aurora
--latest results
--Ph.D. work
Instrument Work
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Spitzer Schedule
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Calibration Scheduling
(internal)
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Zody/AbsCal
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Legacy Archive (password)
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Life at the Spitzer Science Center
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I work as an instrument scientist on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope on the campus of the California Institute of
Technology. This spacecraft was launched on August 25, 2003, and is in outer space taking observations of astronomical
objects, just like the
Hubble Space Telescope. We, however, use infrared
light to look at objects obscured by space dust. This is similar to firefighters using infrared goggles in fires to
find people through smoke.
There are three instruments on board the spacecraft, which is in an earth-trailing orbit. The Multiband Imaging
Spectropolarimeter (MIPS) takes images and low resolution spectra from 24 to 160
microns. The Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) takes spectra from 5-40 microns. My
instrument, the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) , detects light at
wavelengths of 3.6 to 8.0 microns. Infrared astronomy provides important
clues about the formation and evolution of our solar system and the rest of the universe.
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My job here at Spitzer has two major components to it. First of all, I am responsible for
scheduling instrument calibration observations. This means I have to figure out what
calibrations the team needs to perform, gather together the observation requests and
sometimes translate them into a format that the scheduling database can understand,
and then verify that the schedule is complete once the science and calibration observations
are all packaged together.
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The second part of my job involves doing research. My primary Spitzer-oriented research interest lies in
identifying new asteroids, a task that the observatory is very good at, as asteroids in our own solar system
are just hot enough to be very bright in the infrared. I also figure out physical properties of asteroids, and
study comets and interplanetary dust. I also have an interest in the planet Jupiter, on which I did research
for my Ph.D. at UCLA in the
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, where
I looked at the planet's aurora.
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Of course, the best part of my job is that I get to have fun! You can look at some
presentations to see what this job is all about.
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