Tod R. Lauer
| Tod R. Lauer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1957 Ohio |
| Residence | Arizona, United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions |
NOAO Princeton University |
| Alma mater |
Caltech UC Santa Cruz |
| Notable awards | NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1992) |
Tod R. Lauer (born 1957) is an American astronomer on the research staff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. He was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera team, and is a founding member of the Nuker Team. His research interests includes observational searches for massive black holes[1] in the centers of galaxies, the structure of elliptical galaxies, stellar populations, large-scale structure of the universe, and astronomical image processing.[2] He was the Principal Investigator of the Destiny JDEM concept study,[3] one of the precursors to the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope mission. Asteroid 3135 Lauer is named for him. He appears in an episode of the documentary series Naked Science.[4] He joined the New Horizons Pluto team in order to apply his extensive experience with deep space imaging to the New Horizons data, yielding significantly clearer and mathematically accurate images of Pluto and Charon.
References
- ↑ Lauer, T. R. et al. 2007, Astrophysical Journal v.662, pp. 808-834; "The Masses of Nuclear Black Holes in Luminous Elliptical Galaxies and Implications for the Space Density of the Most Massive Black Holes"
- ↑ Lauer, T. R. 1999, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific v.111, pp. 227-237; "Combining Undersampled Dithered Images"
- ↑ Benford, D. J. & T. R. Lauer 2006, Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 6265, pp. 626528 "Destiny: a candidate architecture for the Joint Dark Energy Mission"
- ↑ "IMDB Entry for Naked Science episode #78, 'Hubble's Amazing Universe'".