observers

Tweep of the Week: Patrick Gaulme

/ Jennifer Johnson / Leave a comment
Still Life of Patrick Gaulme with Telescope. Credit: Arl Cope

Still Life of Patrick Gaulme with Telescope. Credit: Arl Cope

Our @sdssurveys Tweep of the Week for the week of March 27th is Patrick Gaulme, stellar and planetary astronomer and part of the observing team for SDSS. Patrick will be at Apache Point Observatory for part of this week, taking observations for @MaNGASurvey, @APOGEEsurvey, and @eBOSSurvey. Fingers crossed for clear skies, low humidity, and calm winds. Now we also turn the blog over to Patrick to introduce himself:

 

Hello, my name is Patrick Gaulme, I have been an SDSS astronomer for about two years. I am also a researcher in the field of seismology of stars and giant planets. I am science PI of a NASA-ADAP grant to study eclipsing binaries detected by the NASA Kepler space telescope, and PI of several observation projects with K2, the resuscitated version of Kepler.

I am involved in developing techniques and methods to measure planetary atmospheric dynamics with Doppler imaging in the visible domain. For this I am science PI of the NASA-EPSCoR granted JIVE in NM instrument project, which is a Doppler imager aiming at detecting oscillations of Jupiter and Saturn and measure winds of thick atmospheres in our solar system.

Tweep of the Week: Audrey Oravetz

/ Karen Masters / Leave a comment

This week our @sdssurveys Twitter account will be run by SDSS observer, Audrey Oravetz. Audrey is part of the staff of observers and fiber optic technicians (the people who plug optical fibers into the plates) working for SDSS at our survey telescope in Apache Point, New Mexico (our telescope is neither automated, nor robotic, despite the common misconception!).

Audrey Oravetz

SDSS Observer, Audrey Oravetz (she’s definitely not a robot).

Here’s Audrey introducing herself in her own words:

Hello. My name is Audrey Oravetz and I have worked as an observer for the 2.5m SDSS telescope for the past nine years. It was always a dream of mine to work at a high-ranking observatory. I enjoy working alongside my colleagues to output a high quantity of quality data for the SDSS projects.

I graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007 with a B.A. in Astrophysics and graduated from NMSU with a M.S. degree last summer. My thesis (under the supervision of Dr. Rene Walterbos (NMSU)) was centered around the study of ionizing H-alpha photons within two star formation nebulae, NGC346 and NGC602, within the SMC.