CRESST News

September, 2008

Drs. Kai-Wing Chan, Nikolai Shaposhnikov, and Craig Markwardt earned 2008 NASA Peer Awards by the Astrophysics Science Division. Craig Markwardt was also named as recipient of a GSFC Honor Award 2008 for Exceptional Achievement in Engineering. Information on their activities include:

  • Dr. Kai-Wing Chan (CRESST/UMBC) was recognized for his sustained contributions to advanced X-ray instrumentation. Dr. Chan made important contributions to three instruments that were successfully delivered to three separate missions: Astro-E1, InFOCUS, and Suzaku. He also has contributed to R&D on Constellation-X's soft X-ray mirrors, where his technical contributions have achieved a 15" angular resolution of a pair of reflectors in the X-ray.
  • Dr Nikolai Shaposhnikov (CRESST/USRA) was recognized for his scientific analysis that uncovered the smallest black hole known. His analysis of many different data sets found patterns in the timing and spectral behavior of black holes and neutron stars. Careful comparison with a theory for a relation between the timing and the spectral properties yielded dynamical masses, including the mass for the smallest black hole yet measured. This idea of the smallest black hole yet measured caught the fancy of the press and was picked up all over the world.
  • Craig Markwardt (CRESST/UMCP) was recognized for his solution of the problem of the misaligned gyros which returned the Swift Observatory to full operation. The Swift mission was in jeopardy in August 2007 when intermittent glitches of one of its two gyros became large and increasingly more frequent. Dr. Markwardt's work gave him an understanding of why the misalignment of the gyro axes caused such a problem, making it possible to test ideas for dealing with the misalignment. His approach worked and the current flight software was then used to continue Swift to normal operations in October 2007.

Dr. Anita Krishnamurthi was also a co-recipient of a GSFC team Exceptional Achievement in Outreach award for her contributions to "Family Science Night."

May, 2008

Dr. Fotis Gariil's work on magnetar-like X-ray bursts from the young  pulsar PSR J18460258 in the SNR Kes 75 is featured in the June issue of  Sky & 
Telescope (which also features GLAST as a cover story). The original paper appeared in the March 28th issue of Science. The article also appeared in ScienceXpress (Feb 21), and was a NASA/GSFC News "Top Story"  
in Feb.    Links to the articles can be found at  http://jca.umbc.edu/csst/news/news.shtml

December, 2007

Two CRESST scientists received GSFC Honor Awards:

Sudip Bhattacharyya (Space Science Achievement): In recognition of his "pioneering x-ray studies of neutron stars to explore and test fundamental physical theories in extreme environments."

Stefan Immler (Space Science Achievement): In recognition of his "innovative use of Swift to explore X-ray emission from supernovae."

October, 2007

Dr. Takanori Sakamoto joins the CRESST consortium at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Taka has been at NASA/GSFC since 2004, and is a Swift BAT team member. He is involved in a development of the automatic pipeline scripts of the BAT GRB data and also in on-board calibration of the energy response matrices of the BAT. His primary science interest is the radiation process of the prompt GRB emission, and is collecting multiwavelength data to investigate the spectral and temporal characteristics of the prompt GRB emission. He is also interested in using GRBs as a cosmological tool.

October, 2007

Dr. Katja Pottschmidt joins the CRESST consortium, at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is working in the INTEGRAL GOF at NASA/GSFC. Previously, Katja worked as a member of the RXTE-HEXTE team at the University of California, San Diego and prior to that as an archive scientist at the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre in Versoix, near Geneva Switzerland. Her main research interest are X-ray binaries, especially black hole binaries and accreting X-ray pulsars, using high resolution X-ray timing analysis including higher order Fourier statistics. Katja also studies the accretion columns and magnetic fields of X-ray pulsars by modeling their broad band spectra, including cyclotron resonance scattering features.