The Universe at Radio Through Infrared Wavelengths

Jeff Mangum NRAO VLA Astronomy

As a scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), I study star formation in the Universe at radio through submillimeter wavelengths. In particular, I use molecular spectral line and continuum emission from star formation regions to measure the physical conditions in these regions. The Very Large Array (banner image), 100m Green Bank, IRAM 30m, and Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes allow me to gather information on the sub- to mega-parsec scale structure of the spatial density, kinetic temperature, and dynamics of these star formation regions.

Jeff Mangum NRAO

I am also driven by a desire to get the most out of the astrophysical measurements that I acquire. To this end I have worked on many issues associated with radio astronomical instrumentation, including pointing and positioning performance, signal calibration, and observing mode efficiency. I am also interested in data visualization. The animation above is a 3D volume rendering of the velocity field based on data from the PSCz catalogs (Saunders et al. 2000 and Schmoldt et al. 1999). I include it here because it looks cool and gives me an opportunity to direct readers to my colleague Brian Kent's web page (from whom I stole the design for this web page). Brian is doing some cool astronomical data visualization work that you really should check out.

I am also the Editor for the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP). Published regularly since 1889, PASP publishes refereed research and instrumentation manuscripts, invited reviews, tutorials, and dissertation summaries. I invite your suggestions for review and tutorial articles that either you would like to see published or would like to publish in PASP.

I earned my Ph.D. in Astronomy from The University of Virginia. You can read about the science that I do and the things that I work on in the area of radio observatory instrumentation within the associated links.