Name Robert Nemiroff | ||
Books The Universe: 365 Days, Astronomy: 365 Days | ||
Dr. Robert J. Nemiroff is a Professor of Physics at Michigan Technological University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1987 and his B.S. from Lehigh University in Engineering Physics in 1982. He is an active researcher with interests that include gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, and cosmology, and is the cofounder and coeditor of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), the home page of which receives over a million hits a day, approximately 20% of nasa.gov traffic. He is married and has one daughter.
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Research
Nemiroff's research interests include gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, sky monitoring, and cosmology. Among other findings, his research on gamma-ray bursts:
In 1999 Nemiroff and colleague Bruce Rafert published a paper showing that continuous astronomical sky monitors could soon become a reality. With students, Nemiroff's initial night sky monitor was an automatically repeating SLR camera with a fisheye lens deployed to Michigan Technological University in 1999, Nemiroff then led a group that designed, built, and deployed the first astronomical all sky optical web monitor, dubbed a CONtinuous CAMera (CONCAM), and in 2000 deployed it to Kitt Peak National Observatory. By the mid-2000s, most major astronomical observatories deployed CONCAM or CONCAM-like devices together capable of monitoring most of the night sky most of the time. Astronomical all sky web monitors are now common at astronomical observing sites. Subsequent collaborative efforts in astronomical deep-sky monitoring now include Pan-STARRs and LSST.
In 1986, he predicted the likelihood of microlensing and calculated basic microlensing induced light curves for several possible lens-source configurations in his 1987 thesis. Among his microlensing findings, he, along with others:
Nemiroff and graduate student Bijunath R. Patla showed that the Sun is a "very interesting gravitational lens," and Nemiroff found that GRB pulses start at the same time at every energy and that they are scale invariant over energy.
His complete publication list is available from ADS.
Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
Nemiroff is one of two creators and editors of the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website. Started in 1995 by Nemiroff and Dr. Jerry T. Bonnell, APOD is consistently among the most popular astronomy sites. Its home page typically receives over one million hits per day; APOD has served over one billion images since its start. It is translated into more than 20 languages and has social media outlets on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and various apps.
Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)
Nemiroff and John Wallin established the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL), an online registry of scientist-written software used in astronomy or astrophysics research, in 1999. The ASCL improves the transparency of astrophysics research by making the software used in research discoverable for examination.