Projects

I am involved in a number of instrumentation and telescope projects. Click on the links below to learn more.

Current Projects

The Local Volume Mapper is one of three surveys that comprise the fifth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V). A network of four small telescopes coupled to spectrographs will map the entire southern Galactic plane, in order to understand the interaction of stars with the interstellar medium.

LINC-NIRVANA is an ambitious instrument which brings together light from the two, 8.4 meter primary mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope onto a single focal plane. Using advanced Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics, LN delivers diffraction-limited imagery over a wide field of view.

The Large Binocular Telescope  is a twin, 8.4 meter near-infrared and visible wavelength observing facility located on Mt. Graham in eastern Arizona.

The European Extremely Large Telescope  is a project to design, construct, and operate a 39 meter telescope on Cerro Armazones in Chile.

The MPIA All-Sky Camera is an undergraduate project to create a weather monitoring camera for an observatory. A visible wavelength version is now in use, and a mid-infrared upgrade is underway.

Former Projects

Darwin - An interferometric space mission to find life-bearing planets
MAX - A thermal infrared camera for the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope
MAGIC - A pair of near-infrared cameras ad spectrographs for Calar Alto Observatory

About the picture

That's me standing in front of LINC-NIRVANA at the LBT. At  roughly 6m wide, 5m deep, and 4.5 m high, LINC-NIRVANA is truly a pathfinder for the next generation of very large instruments for the ELT's.

Quick Links

Local Volume Mapper
LINC-NIRVANA
Large Binocular Telescope
European ELT