Space Grant  

Assistant Professor Aaron Steinhauer

Department: Physics

Funding Source: NASA (Cornell)

Period of Funding: April 1, 2005 – October 22, 2011

Award Total: $39,000

Project Description:

This grant has been used to fund three main projects with three different project directors: Aaron Steinhauer has led several projects studying star clusters in the optical and infrared with the goals of determining cluster parameters such as age, distance, interstallar reddening, metallicity, and searching for brown dwarfs. George Marcus has supervised students who are helping to put together and commission a cavity ring-down spectrometer that can be used to detect very trace amounts of particulates in the atmosphere. Ed Pogozelski has led a project building an automated parasail that can launch high in the atmosphere off of data collecting weather balloons and return the instruments safely to a collection site.