Laura Danly (born July 7, 1958) is an American astronomer and academic who served as Curator of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. She has also served as chair of the Department of Space Sciences at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Danly earned a B.A. in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[ citation needed ]
Danly has held academic posts at the University of Denver (where she served as assistant professor), and at Pomona College (where she served as visiting assistant professor). In these positions, she developed curricula focusing on astronomy, archaeoastronomy, solar physics, astrophotography and astrobiology.
Danly spent several years at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where she held a variety of positions including project scientist for education, assistant astronomer and Hubble Fellow. In addition, Danly conducted post-doctoral research at the STScI.
As an astronomer, Danly has extensive observational experience, including some 441 hours of ultraviolet observation (much of it via the Hubble Space Telescope). Danly has also completed hundreds of hours of optical and radio observation at such facilities as Kitt Peak National Observatory, McDonald Observatory, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
In 1991, Danly founded the Women's Science Forum to encourage young women to pursue careers in science by providing opportunities to meet and ask questions of leading women scientists and engineers and take part in hands-on activities to explore opportunities in various career disciplines. [1] In 1993, Danly co-authored The Baltimore Charter for Women in Astronomy [2] to address the concerns of women as a minority group in the field of astronomy. [3]
Danly has also been a guest scientist on the documentary series The Universe in several episodes and on How the Universe Works . [4]
On October 21, 2009 Danly hosted a lecture on the latest science from the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn, where she introduced key scientists involved in the space probe. [5]
Danly retired as Curator of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on December 4, 2020. [6] She is now retired from the field, but is still an active science communicator on her Twitter.
Edwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft.
Sandra Moore Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
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 and in the Rotunda building in Baltimore, Maryland.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer. Her discovery of how to effectively measure vast distances to remote galaxies led to a shift in the understanding of the nature of the universe.
Ian P. Griffin is a New Zealand astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and a public spokesman upon scientific matters. He is currently the Director of Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand. Griffin was the CEO of Science Oxford, in Oxford, United Kingdom, and the former head of public outreach at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute.
Nancy Grace Roman was an American astronomer who made important contributions to stellar classification and motions. The first female executive at NASA, Roman served as NASA's first Chief of Astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, establishing her as one of the "visionary founders of the US civilian space program".
Jennifer J. Wiseman is Senior Project Scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope, and an American astronomer, born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from MIT and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1995. Wiseman discovered periodic comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff while working as an undergraduate search assistant in 1987. Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. She previously headed the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics. She studies star forming regions of our galaxy using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes, with a particular interest in molecular cloud cores, protostars, and outflows. She led a major study that mapped a star forming region in the constellation Orion.
Rebecca Oppenheimer is an American astrophysicist and one of four curator/professors in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Oppenheimer is a comparative exoplanetary scientist. She investigates planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Her optics laboratory is the birthplace of a number of new astronomical instruments designed to tackle the problem of directly seeing and taking spectra of nearby solar systems with exoplanets and studying their composition, with the ultimate goal of finding life outside the solar system.
Stephen J. Edberg is a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is perhaps best known for creating collaborative efforts between amateur and professional astronomers. A professional astronomer since 1970, Edberg still considers himself to be an active amateur astronomer as well and is an active astronomical observer, photographer, and telescope maker. He presently serves as staff astronomer for the Solar System Exploration website posted by NASA Headquarters and staff scientist for Earth science communication and for Exoplanet Exploration communication.
The Space Science Institute (SSI) in Boulder, Colorado, is a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation formed in 1992. Its purpose is to create and maintain an environment where scientific research and education programs can flourish in an integrated fashion. SSI is among the four non-profit institutes in the US cited in a 2007 report by Nature, including Southwest Research Institute, Planetary Science Institute, and Eureka Scientific, which manage federal grants for non-tenure-track astronomers.
Heidi B. Hammel is a planetary astronomer who has extensively studied Neptune and Uranus. She was part of the team imaging Neptune from Voyager 2 in 1989. She led the team using the Hubble Space Telescope to view Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact with Jupiter in 1994. She has used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope to study Uranus and Neptune, discovering new information about dark spots, planetary storms and Uranus' rings. In 2002, she was selected as an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Space research is scientific study carried out in outer space, and by studying outer space. From the use of space technology to the observable universe, space research is a wide research field. Earth science, materials science, biology, medicine, and physics all apply to the space research environment. The term includes scientific payloads at any altitude from deep space to low Earth orbit, extended to include sounding rocket research in the upper atmosphere, and high-altitude balloons.
Wendy Laurel Freedman is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble constant, and as director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile. She is now the John & Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Her principal research interests are in observational cosmology, focusing on measuring both the current and past expansion rates of the universe, and on characterizing the nature of dark energy.
Duília de Mello is a Brazilian-born American astronomer. She is currently full professor in physics at the Catholic University of America and collaborates with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Claudia Megan Urry is an American astrophysicist, who has served as the President of the American Astronomical Society, as chair of the Department of Physics at Yale University, and as part of the Hubble Space Telescope faculty. She is currently the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Yale University and Director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Urry is notable not only for her contributions to astronomy and astrophysics, including work on black holes and multiwavelength surveys, but also for her work addressing sexism and sex equality in astronomy, science, and academia more generally.
Robert Eugene Williams is an American astronomer who served as the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) from 1993 to 1998, and the president of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) from 2009 to 2012. Prior to his work at STScI, he was a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson for 18 years and the director of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory from 1986 to 1993.
George Kildare Miley is an Irish-Dutch astronomer. He holds a professorship at Leiden University, where he served as director of Leiden Observatory from 1996 to 2003.
Anne L. Kinney is an American space scientist and educator. Kinney is currently the Deputy Center Director at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Previously, she held positions as the head of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Chief Scientist of the W.M. Keck Observatory, Director of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Director of the Origins Program at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Director of the Universe Division at NASA Headquarters. She earned a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a doctorate in astrophysics from New York University, and has published more than 80 papers on extragalactic astronomy. She was an instrument scientist for the Faint Object Spectrograph that flew on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Jennifer Mae Lotz is an American astronomer who studies the shape and evolution of galaxies, including galaxy mergers. She works at the NOIRLab, a project of the National Science Foundation, as director of the Gemini Observatory.