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David Corcoran grew up in a small town called
Wexford in the southeast of Ireland. David's earliest
memory is of the lunar landing in 1969. He was age
two. He is undecided whether it was this or the
awe inspiring night sky over Wexford which lead
him to pursue a career in science. At any rate,
some 16 years after the lunar landing, David attended
Dublin City University
from which he graduated with a BSc. in applied physics.
Subsequently he studied astronomy under the supervision
of Prof. Tom Ray at the Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies. NGC 1999 was
one of the regions investigated by David for his
Ph.D. thesis, and it is with a certain fondness
that some several years later he once again gets
a chance to see the image of this region but this
time as a splendid Hubble observation. Indeed, David
believes its quite fitting that Irish Astronomers
should be involved with the observation, since the
central part of the nebula is quite reminiscent
of a harp, a national symbol of Ireland!
David is currently a lecturer in Physics in the
University of Limerick,
where he teaches and researches in the areas of
optics and computational physics and when possible
takes a telescope or binoculars out and looks at
the night sky.
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