Summer 2000 -- Vol. 17, No. 1

FACES OF PENN STATE

Gordon Garmire
Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics

When Gordon Garmire built his first telescope, as an 11-year-old in Tigard, Oregon, the funding source was a strawberry farm, where he picked berries to earn money for the telescope's parts.

When he worked on his most notable telescope, providing the ACIS camera for NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the funding source was the U.S. government.

No matter the project, though, the motivation for Garmire's work remains the same--his curiosity.

Whether advising an expedition in Australia to launch a rocket to study a supernova, collaborating with a colleague, constructing a telescope, mentoring a student, or creating and designing an X-ray camera that provides some of the sharpest images ever of our universe, his curiosity drives much of the effort.  Once started, his attention to detail, experience, and expertise set the tone for his work.

The ACIS camera, combined with Chandra's X-ray focusing mirrors, allows great sharpness of focus.  As a result, scientists can, for the first time, focus on individual stars within a large number of crowded stars.  Among the other things the camera can detect are black holes, galaxies, and any other high-energy object in the sky.

"The ACIS camera is amazingly efficient in the way it responds to X rays," said John Nousek, senior scientist and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a member of the ACIS development team.  "It records images, photon-by-photon, in 50 X-ray colors simultaneously.  In virtually no other part of the electromagnetic spectrum is it possible to do such a thing, and ACIS does so with near perfection."

Of course, whether you're spending your own hard-earned money, after bending over to pick strawberries, or you're tackling a project with government money that requires perfection, you want to do things right.

In the case of Chandra, the observatory's high-level orbit (designed as a cost-cutting measure) meant it could not be serviced by the space shuttle.  So, the project could not afford any problems, and Garmire's camera was the project's key instrument.

"Everybody has to really do things right the first time, because you don't have a second chance," Garmire said.  "Any big observatory like this requires a tremendous amount of teamwork and coordination."

Again, Garmire set the tone for Penn State's portion of the team--and he had capable help.  For example, Eric
Feigelson, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who combined with Jogesh Babu, professor of statistics at Penn State, to pioneer the field of astrostatistics, helped provide a way to interpret the data provided by the observatory.

Neil Brandt, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, utilized much of the early information from the observatory to further his research about black holes and quasars.

In fact, Brandt says he accepted his position at Penn State based largely on the opportunity to work with Garmire.
 

--By Steve Sampsell

Back to Science Journal Summer 2000 Index

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