Meet: Ted Dunham

What I do (asked in 1996)
I have two jobs. The first is as a space scientist in which I do astronomical research. My particular area of interest is in planetary astronomy, and I do a lot of work with instrumentation - telescopes, electronics, optics, mechanical design. I also am interested in using occultations to study planets, which involves traveling to places where the occultation will be visible and observing there. It takes me to many different places in the world. I'm also active in doing the measurements that lead to the prediction of the place where the occultation will be visible. This is pretty tricky work and involves observing at Mt. Hamilton (just south of San Jose, California).

My second job is as the project scientist for the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO). In this job I serve as the glue between the people who operate the KAO and the scientists, both at Ames and elsewhere. I also write the NASA Research Announcement that asks for proposals to use the airplane and am involved in the review process for the proposals that come in (although I don't actually review them myself). There is a lot of bureaucratic paperwork that goes with this part of the job. The better part is that I provide a scientific perspective to the operations people when they are working on new equipment for the airplane. I also field some PR-type requests.

How I got to where I am today
I was interested in astronomy as a kid. I made a telescope while I was in high school, went to an astronomy summer program one year, and then went to college (Carleton College, in Minnesota) and majored in Physics. I went on to graduate school at Cornell (Ithaca, NY) and finished my Ph.D. in four years. While I was a graduate student I first flew on the KAO and my thesis involved KAO data. Our whole research group moved to MIT about a year later, and I stayed there for about 11 years doing more occultation work and some KAO image-quality measurements.

Some of my goals
This year has had a bumper crop of occultations and there are none on the horizon for next year. My goal for next year is to dig through all the data we got this year and write up some papers and also a major proposal. The KAO is going down to Georgia for its every-five-year major maintenance next year and will be out of commission for five to six months. The SOFIA project is coming along, and I hope it will get started, but I hesitate to call this a goal since it is mainly dependent on things I have no influence over.

Personal tidbits
I'm married and have three kids: 7, 11, and 14. We all like to go swimming and make and shoot off model rockets. I enjoy scuba diving and sailing, but I don't get a chance to do it very much.