Greek American astronomer (born 1967)
Paul Kalas (born August 13, 1967) is a Greek American astronomer known for his discoveries of debris disks around stars . Kalas led a team of scientists to obtain the first visible-light images of an extrasolar planet with orbital motion around the star Fomalhaut , at a distance of 25 light years from Earth .[1] [2] The planet is referred to as Fomalhaut b .
Background
Kalas was born in New York City to George Kavallinis and Maria Drettakis, who immigrated to the United States from Heraklion , Crete . Kalas attended Detroit Country Day School in Michigan, and studied astronomy and physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor . He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy in 1996 from the University of Hawaiʻi under the direction of astronomer David Jewitt .
Kalas worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany , the Space Telescope Science Institute , and the University of California, Berkeley . In 2006, he became an Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kalas lives with his wife Aspasia Gkika and daughters Maria-Nikoleta and Natalia near Berkeley, California .[3]
Discoveries
Kalas discovered several circumstellar disks using a coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope and at the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope at Mauna Kea , Hawaii. In 1995 he discovered various forms of asymmetric structures in optical images of the Beta Pictoris disk.[4] He was the lead scientist for the first optical images of debris disks surrounding the nearby red dwarf AU Microscopii and the bright star Fomalhaut .[5] [6]
Kalas' Hubble Space Telescope image of Fomalhaut revealed a narrow belt of dusty material analogous to our Solar System 's Kuiper Belt . However, Kalas also found that Fomalhaut's belt is narrow and geometrically offset from the star by 15 astronomical units . These features are considered strong evidence for an extrasolar planet orbiting Fomalhaut that gravitationally sculpts the morphology of the belt.
Honors
Selected publications
Articles
Books
Kalas, Paul (2018), The Oneironauts: Using dreams to engineer our future' , ISBN 978-1720177616
References
^ Overbye, Dennis (November 14, 2008). "First Pictures Taken of Extrasolar Planets" . The New York Times . Retrieved 13 November 2008 .
^ Kalas, Paul; et al. (2008). "Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light-Years from Earth". Science . 322 (5906): 1345–1348. arXiv :0811.1994 . Bibcode :2008Sci...322.1345K . doi :10.1126/science.1166609 . PMID 19008414 . S2CID 10054103 .
^ "Paul Kalas – Astronomer | Author" .
^ Kalas, P.; Jewitt, D. (1995). "Asymmetries in the Beta Pictoris dust disk". The Astrophysical Journal . 110 : 794–804. Bibcode :1995AJ....110..794K . doi :10.1086/117565 .
^ a b Kalas, P.; Graham, J.R. & Clampin, M. (2005). "A planetary system as the origin of structure in Fomalhaut's dust belt". Nature . 435 (7045): 1067–1070. arXiv :astro-ph/0506574 . Bibcode :2005Natur.435.1067K . doi :10.1038/nature03601 . PMID 15973402 . S2CID 4406070 .
^ a b Kalas, P.; Liu, M.C. & Matthews, B.C. (2004). "Discovery of a large dust disk around the nearby star AU Microscopii". Science . 303 (5666): 1990–1992. arXiv :astro-ph/0403132 . Bibcode :2004Sci...303.1990K . doi :10.1126/science.1093420 . PMID 14988511 . S2CID 6943137 .
^ Kalas, P.; Fitzgerald, M. & Graham, J.R. (2007). "Discovery of extreme asymmetry in the debris disk surrounding HD 15115". The Astrophysical Journal . 661 (1): L85–L88. arXiv :0704.0645 . Bibcode :2007ApJ...661L..85K . doi :10.1086/518652 . S2CID 16599464 .
^ a b Kalas, P.; Graham, J.R.; Clampin, M.C. & Fitzgerald, M. (2006). "First scattered light images of debris disks around HD 53143 and HD 139664". The Astrophysical Journal . 637 (1): L57–L60. arXiv :astro-ph/0601488 . Bibcode :2006ApJ...637L..57K . doi :10.1086/500305 . S2CID 18293244 .
^ Sarah Yang (November 24, 2014). "Four UC Berkeley faculty named AAAS fellows" . Retrieved 2015-11-16 .
^ AIAA Public Release (July 13, 2010). "Space 2010 Conference set for August 30 - Sep. 2 in Anaheim" . Retrieved 2015-11-16 .
^ Robert Sanders (February 18, 2010). "Images of extrasolar planets win award for most outstanding papers in Science" . Retrieved 2010-03-11 .
^ AAAS (November 2009). "Newcomb Cleveland Prize Recipients" . Archived from the original on 2012-10-23. Retrieved 2010-04-21 .
External links
International National Academics Other