Paul Kalas
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Paul Kalas
Paul Kalas (born August 13, 1967) is a Greek American astronomer known for his discoveries of debris disks around stars. Kalas led a team of scientists to obtain the first visible-light images of an extrasolar planet with orbital motion around the star Fomalhaut, at a distance of 25 light years from Earth. The planet is referred to as Fomalhaut b. Background Kalas was born in New York City to George Kavallinis and Maria Drettakis, who immigrated to the United States from Heraklion, Crete. Kalas attended Detroit Country Day School in Michigan, and studied astronomy and physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy in 1996 from the University of Hawaiʻi under the direction of astronomer David Jewitt. Kalas worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, he became an adjunct professor of ...
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Cerro Pachón
Cerro Pachón is a mountain in central Chile, located east of the city of La Serena in the Coquimbo Region. The mountain is seismically active. It is the site of the 8.1 m Gemini South Telescope of the Gemini Observatory, the 4.1 m SOAR optical imager and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The mountain site has arid, desert conditions with cacti, shrubs, and wildflowers dotting the landscape. It is host to fauna that include Andean condor, viscachas, and the occasional fox, as well as typical desert species such as lizards, snakes, spiders, and scorpions. Observatories Starting in 1964, Cerro Morado and Cerro Pachón were the subject of routine observations of seeing conditions. Known as astronomical seeing monitors (ASM), these were operated by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In 1989, site planning was begun by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory to select two sites for a proposed pair of 8 m telescopes, one in the northern hemisphere and the ot ...
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Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering Water distribution on Earth, 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is at least somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large Ice sheet, sheets of ice at Polar regions of Earth, Earth's polar polar desert, deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers, and Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth's outer core, Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a ...
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Coronagraph
A coronagraph is a telescopic attachment designed to block out the direct light from a star or other bright object so that nearby objects – which otherwise would be hidden in the object's bright glare – can be resolved. Most coronagraphs are intended to view the corona of the Sun, but a new class of conceptually similar instruments (called ''stellar coronagraphs'' to distinguish them from ''solar coronagraphs'') are being used to find extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks around nearby stars as well as host galaxies in quasars and other similar objects with active galactic nuclei (AGN). Invention The coronagraph was introduced in 1931 by the French astronomer Bernard Lyot; since then, coronagraphs have been used at many solar observatories. Coronagraphs operating within Earth's atmosphere suffer from scattered light in the sky itself, due primarily to Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the upper atmosphere. At view angles close to the Sun, the sky is much bri ...
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Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, California, Oakland and Emeryville, California, Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany, California, Albany and the Unincorporated area, unincorporated community of Kensington, California, Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321. Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is ...
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Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, M ...
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Space Telescope Science Institute
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. STScI was established in 1981 as a community-based science center that is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). STScI's offices are located on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus and in the The Rotunda (Baltimore), Rotunda building in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to performing continuing science operations of HST and preparing for scientific exploration with JWST and Roman, STScI manages and operates the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), which holds data from numerous active and legacy missions, including HST, JWST, Kepler Space Telescope, Kepler, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, T ...
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Heidelberg, Germany
Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of students, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 51st-largest city. Located about south of Frankfurt, Heidelberg is part of the densely populated Rhine-Neckar, Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region which has its centre in Mannheim. Heidelberg is located on the Neckar River, at the point where it leaves its narrow valley between the Oden Forest and the Kleiner Odenwald, Little Oden Forest, and enters the wide Upper Rhine Plain. The old town lies in the valley, the end of which is flanked by the Königstuhl (Odenwald), Königstuhl in the south and the Heiligenberg (Heidelberg), Heiligenberg in the north. The majority of the population lives in the districts west of the mountains in the Upper Rhine Plain, into which the city has expan ...
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Max Planck Institute For Astronomy
The Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, MPIA) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society (MPG). It is located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany near the top of the Königstuhl (Odenwald), Königstuhl, adjacent to the historic Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory, Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl astronomical observatory. The institute primarily conducts basic research in the natural sciences in the field of astronomy. In addition to its own astronomical observations and astronomical research, the Institute is also actively involved in the development of observation instruments. The instruments or parts of them are manufactured in the institute's own workshops. History The founding of the institute in 1967 resulted from the insight that a supra-regional institute equipped with powerful telescopes was necessary in order to conduct internationally competitive astronomical research. Hans Elsässer, an astronomer, bec ...
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Doctor Of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original research. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated PhD (or, at times, as Ph.D. in North American English, North America), pronounced as three separate letters ( ). The University of Oxford uses the alternative abbreviation "DPhil". PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Since it is an earned research degree, those studying for a PhD are required to produce original research that expands the boundaries of knowledge, normally in the form of a Thesis, dissertation, and, in some cases, defend their work before a panel of other experts in the field. In many fields, the completion of a PhD is typically required for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist. Definition In the context o ...
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University Of Michigan, Ann Arbor
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Michigan is one of the earliest American research universities and is a founding member of the Association of American Universities. In the fall of 2023, the university employed 8,189 faculty members and enrolled 52,065 students in its programs. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It consists of nineteen colleges and offers 250 degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. In 2021, it ranked third among American universities in research expenditures according to the National Science Foundation. The University of Michigan's athletic teams are collectively known as the Wolverines. They compete in NCAA Division I ( FBS) as a m ...
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Detroit Country Day School
Detroit Country Day School (also known as DCD, DCDS, or Country Day) is a private, secular school located in three campuses in Oakland County, in the U.S. state of Michigan, north of Detroit. The administrative offices, facility services, safety and security services, and the upper school (Grades 9-12) are situated in a campus in Beverly Hills. The middle school (Grades 4-8) is also located in Beverly Hills, seamlessly connected to the upper school. Additionally, the Lower School (PK-3) is situated in Bloomfield Township, near Bloomfield Hills. These campuses collectively provide a comprehensive educational experience. DCDS was founded in Detroit in 1914 by Alden Shaw inspired by the Country Day School movement. The school's motto is ''Mens Sana in Corpore Sano'', a Latin phrase meaning "Sound Mind in a Sound Body". The school colors are blue and gold.
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Crete
Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete is located about south of the Peloponnese, and about southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete (or North Cretan Sea) to the north and the Libyan Sea (or South Cretan Sea) to the south. Crete covers 260 km from west to east but is narrow from north to south, spanning three longitudes but only half a latitude. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete (), which is the southernmost of the 13 Modern regions of Greece, top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most popu ...
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