ACTIONS
1997INTER ACTIONS
1997
Cosmic Expansion: An Interview with Richard Griffiths and Robert Nichol
Our observational astrophysics group has expanded from one to three with the hiring of Richard Griffiths and Robert Nichol. Visit the group on the web at http://astro.phys.cmu.edu.
If the amateur astronomer in you has ever been amazed by the brilliance of the night sky, thrilled by the beauty and power of the images from the Hubble Space Telescope, or wondered at the origins of the universe, then you can appreciate the work being done by a new cadre of experimental astrophysicists at Carnegie Mellon. Professor Richard Griffiths, who recently joined the Physics Department's experimental astrophysics research group, is in charge of the Hubble's Medium Deep Survey, a key project charting thousands of galaxies. Adding further excitement to this growing research area is Robert Nichol, who joined the department this winter as an assistant professor.
Together with astrophysicist Jeff Peterson, Carnegie Mellon's astrophysics group is interested in getting access to observational research time on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, a new large astronomical telescope currently nearing completion at McDonald Observatory in a remote part of west Texas. They also are keen to becoming partners in a copy of this telescope that will be built in the southern hemisphere and are in the midst of planning an aggressive fund-raising campaign to do this.
Individually, their research spans the galaxy and beyond. Griffiths watches the skies through the eyes of Hubble and through x-ray telescopes in Earth orbit. Nichol is a collaborator in a major new survey of the sky using a dedicated telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico. The project is called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and will be the first major survey of the sky since the National Geographic/Palomar Sky Survey in the late 1940s. Nichol uses remote access to the telescope in New Mexico to study the origins of the universe.
Both are also actively involved in sorting out and beefing up student courses in observational astronomy and are taking on student research partners who can help create WWW sites and look at the vast amounts of observational data that the researchers are using.
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