Jeremy Richard Mould (born 31 July 1949) is an Australian

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

currently at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at

Swinburne University of Technology The Swinburne University of Technology (or simply Swinburne) is a public university, public research university in Melbourne, Australia. It is the modern descendant of the Eastern Suburbs Technical College established in 1908, renamed Swinburne ...

. Mould was previously Director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

and the American

National Optical Astronomy Observatory The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) was the United States national observatory for ground-based nighttime ultraviolet-optical-infrared (OUVIR) astronomy. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded NOAO to provide forefront astronom ...

. He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow, at the University of Melbourne.

Life

Mould was born 31 July 1949 in

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

, England, and emigrated to Australia in 1963. He graduated from the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, and

with a PhD. He was research fellow at

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomy, astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With ...

, and professor at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

Research

Mould's work at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

during the early 1980s aimed to determine both the size and the age of the Universe by identifying and calibrating

Standard Candles The cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A ''direct'' distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible ...

, that is, very bright stars whose Absolute Magnitude can be accurately measured when near the Earth, with more distant examples being identified by their colour, spectrum, or in the case of

Cepheid Variables A Cepheid variable () is a type of variable star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature. It changes in brightness, with a well-defined stable period (typically 1–100 days) and amplitude. Cepheids are important cosmi ...

, the period of oscillation of their brightness. Other important work included the measurement of luminous evolved red giants in star clusters of the Magellanic Clouds, which he did in collaboration with Marc Aaronson. Also in collaboration with Marc Aaronson and John Huchra, Mould undertook measurements of the Hubble Constant that would eventually extend to the use of the Hubble Space Telescope and the WFPC2 camera to study Cepheid variables and use them as standard candles. Mould was on the science team for the WFPC2 camera that helped to restore the Hubble Space Telescope's image quality, correcting spherical aberration in the primary mirror. In collaboration with Gary DaCosta and Michael David Crawford, Mould prepared Hertzsprung Russell Diagrams of

Large Magellanic Cloud The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around , the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, Sagittarius Dwarf ...

and

Small Magellanic Cloud The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way. Classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy, the SMC has a D25 isophotal diameter of about , and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 bill ...

Globular Clusters A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars that is bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards its center. It can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member stars, all orbiting ...

to determine their age, with the resulting

Standard Candle The cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A ''direct'' distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible ...

being the brightest star in each cluster, with that star's absolute luminosity being derivable from its distance, with the B-R Color of the brightest cluster's star being used to determine the ages of more distant clusters by the colours of their brightest stars. The

Magellanic Clouds The Magellanic Clouds (''Magellanic system'' or ''Nubeculae Magellani'') are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because both ...

are small

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

that orbit the

Milky Way Galaxy The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galaxy, which are ...

, with the distance from Earth to the

being 157,000 light years and that of the

being 200,000. During the Summer of 1983, Mould, daCosta and Crawford extended this work to a distance of 2.5 million light years by recording

CCD CCD may refer to: Science and technology * Charge-coupled device, an electronic light sensor used in various devices including digital cameras * .ccd, the filename extension for CloneCD's CD image file * Carbonate compensation depth, a property ...

spectrogram A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time. When applied to an audio signal, spectrograms are sometimes called sonographs, voiceprints, or voicegrams. When the data are represen ...

s of

orbiting the

Andromeda Galaxy The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It was originally named the Andromeda Nebula and is cataloged as Messier 31, M31, and NGC 224. Andromeda has a Galaxy#Isophotal diameter, D25 isop ...

at the

Cassegrain Focus The Cassegrain reflector is a combination of a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror, often used in optical telescopes and radio antennas, the main characteristic being that the optical path folds back onto itself, relative to the ...

of the Five Meter

Hale Telescope The Hale Telescope is a , 3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, de ...

at Palomar Mountain Observatory, with the

being determined by the expectation that the spectra of each cluster as a whole would be dominated by the spectrum of the brightest star in it.

Collaborators

* Gary da Costa, Professor of Astronomy,

* Michael David Crawford, CEO, Dulcinea Technologies Corporation

Awards

According to

ISI Highly Cited The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis ...

he is among the highest cited astronomers in the world. Asteroid

18240 Mould Eighteen or 18 may refer to: * 18 (number) * One of the years 18 BC, AD 18, 1918, 2018 Film, television and entertainment * ''18'' (film), a 1993 Taiwanese experimental film based on the short story ''God's Dice'' * ''Eighteen'' (film), a 20 ...

is named in his honour. Mould was awarded the

George Van Biesbroeck Prize The George Van Biesbroeck Prize is an award for long-term achievements in the field of astronomy. According to the American Astronomical Society awards website; "The Van Biesbroeck prize is normally awarded every two years and honors a living indi ...

in 1981 with Marc Aaronson, the

Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy The Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy is awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society to a young (less than age 36) astronomer for outstanding achievement in observational astronomical research. The prize is named after Newton Lacy Pier ...

in 1984 with Marc Aaronson, and the

Gruber Prize in Cosmology The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, established in 2000, is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 awarded by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2001, t ...

in 2009 with

Wendy Freedman Wendy Laurel Freedman (born July 17, 1957) is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble's law, Hubble constant, and as director of the Carnegie Institution of Science, Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Califo ...

and

Robert Kennicutt Robert Charles Kennicutt, Jr. FRS is an American astronomer. He is currently a professor at Texas A&M University. He is a former Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge. He was formerly Edi ...

. He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

in 2020.

References

External links

Astronomer's webpage
''NOAO'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Mould, Jeremy 1949 births Living people British emigrants to Australia 20th-century Australian astronomers Academic staff of Swinburne University of Technology University of Melbourne alumni Australian National University alumni California Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Fellows of the American Astronomical Society Recipients of the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy