Paul Kalas Explained

Paul Kalas
Birth Date:13 August 1967
Birth Place:New York City, United States
Fields:Astronomy
Workplaces:University of California, Berkeley
Alma Mater:University of Hawaiʻi
University of Michigan
Doctoral Advisor:David Jewitt
Known For:Exoplanet Research
Fomalhaut, Fomalhaut b

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.

Circumstellar disks discovered: 5
October 14, 2003
May 17, 2004
HD 15115[7] July 17, 2006
HD 53143[8] September 11, 2004
October 14, 2004

Honors

Selected publications

Articles

Books

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: First Pictures Taken of Extrasolar Planets . 13 November 2008 . . Dennis . Overbye . November 14, 2008.
  2. Kalas . Paul . etal . 2008 . Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light-Years from Earth . . 322 . 5906 . 1345–1348 . 10.1126/science.1166609 . 19008414 . 2008Sci...322.1345K . 0811.1994 . 10054103.
  3. Web site: Paul Kalas – Astronomer | Author.
  4. Kalas. P.. Jewitt, D.. 1995. Asymmetries in the Beta Pictoris dust disk. 1995AJ....110..794K. The Astrophysical Journal. 110. 794–804. 10.1086/117565.
  5. Kalas. P.. Graham, J.R.. Clampin, M.. amp. 2005. A planetary system as the origin of structure in Fomalhaut's dust belt. Nature. 435. 7045. 1067–1070. 10.1038/nature03601. 15973402. 2005Natur.435.1067K. astro-ph/0506574 . 4406070.
  6. Kalas. P.. Liu, M.C.. Matthews, B.C.. amp. 2004. Discovery of a large dust disk around the nearby star AU Microscopii. Science. 303. 5666. 1990–1992. 10.1126/science.1093420. 14988511. 2004Sci...303.1990K. astro-ph/0403132 . 6943137.
  7. Kalas. P.. Fitzgerald, M.. Graham, J.R.. amp. 2007. Discovery of extreme asymmetry in the debris disk surrounding HD 15115. The Astrophysical Journal. 661. 1. L85–L88. 10.1086/518652. 2007ApJ...661L..85K. 0704.0645 . 16599464.
  8. Kalas. P.. Graham, J.R.. Clampin, M.C.. Fitzgerald, M.. amp. 2006. First scattered light images of debris disks around HD 53143 and HD 139664. The Astrophysical Journal. 637. 1. L57–L60. 10.1086/500305. 2006ApJ...637L..57K. astro-ph/0601488 . 18293244.
  9. Web site: Four UC Berkeley faculty named AAAS fellows . Sarah Yang . November 24, 2014 . 2015-11-16.
  10. Web site: Space 2010 Conference set for August 30 - Sep. 2 in Anaheim . AIAA Public Release . July 13, 2010 . 2015-11-16.
  11. Web site: Images of extrasolar planets win award for most outstanding papers in Science . Robert Sanders . February 18, 2010 . 2010-03-11.
  12. Web site: Newcomb Cleveland Prize Recipients . AAAS . November 2009 . 2010-04-21 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121023152927/http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/awards/newcomb/newcomb_winners.shtml . 2012-10-23 . dead.

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