Jason Austermann

Graduate Student

Department: Astronomy
Voice Phone Number: (413) 545-1879
Fax Phone Number: (413) 545-4223

E-mail Address: austermann "at" astro.umass.edu

Postal Address:
Astronomy Dept.
619 LGRT
710 N. Pleasant St.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003

Reasearch interests:

• Instrumentation - I'm Currently building the AzTEC mm-wave continuum receiver for current use at the JCMT Telescope where it will undergo its first engineering run in June 2005 which will hopefully be followed by science runs until it moves to the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), which is currently under construction.
  *update* - 6/16/05 - We are currently at the JCMT and things seem to be going very well! The instrument is behaving tremendously well with high levels of stability. We've had fantastic weather and we've been getting (apparently) great data nearly nonstop! Of course, more will be known through analysis in the coming weeks. Now it's time to pack up and enjoy the successes. Perhaps with these positive results, AzTEC will be back in action in the not too distant future.
  
• Cometary dust - I attempted to observe the large-grain dust population of comet C/2001 NEAT with the Bolocam instrument on the CSO in May, 2004. Unfortunately, we had extremely bad weather that resulted in no useful data. To learn more about sub-mm/mm-wave cometary dust observations, I'd suggest reading Jewitt & Matthews, AJ 117:1056-1062. In this paper they use SCUBA observations to derive particulate mass loss from the comet Hale-Bopp.
  
  
• Extrasolar Planets - My undergraduate work included early observations of the planetary transit of sun-like star HD209458. I was one of the first to observe the full transit and accurately obtain the transit duration time. It was all done using equipment on par with widely available amateur astronomy equipment. In fact, since my observations, it seems that observing this transit has become one of the more sought after accomplishments of amateur astronomers across the world (for instance, see the January 2003 edition of Astronomy. It's been several years since I've been involved in this field, but a good place to start for information would be exoplanets.org. This is a site started, I believe, by Geoffrey W. Marcy, who is one of the early experts of this field.
  

Other interesting stuff:

• www.dhmo.org - Learn the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide. This stuff is everywhere!
• The Onion - The only way to be truly fair and balanced is to be an equal opportunity mocker.
• Stinky Meat Project - Idle hands are bad science's playground....
• Bad Astronomy - If you're a conspiracy theorist, please read this page. Logic is not your enemy.

I am a member of the University of Massachusetts community.