COS Instrument Definition Team

From the COS Website at Colorado University

The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is a new instrument for the Hubble Space Telescope that was to be installed in 2006 during the now cancelled SM-4. It is designed for high throughput, medium resolution (R=20,000) spectroscopy (spectral study) of point sources, allowing the efficient observation of numerous faint extragalactic and galactic ultraviolet (1150-3000 A) targets. The primary science objectives of the mission are the study of the origins of large scale structure in the universe, the formation and evolution of galaxies, and the origin of stellar and planetary systems and the cold interstellar mediume. For more information on COS, visit the COS Website at STScI, the COS website at Ball Aerospace, or the COS public website at Colorado.

COS Instrument Definition Team Members include:

James C. Green (University of Colorado)

James Green is the Principle Investigator of the COS Team and Professor and Chair of the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. His specialities includ instrumentation, including design and leadership COS, FUSE, and the ultraviolet and planetary sounding rocket program. Astrophysical interests include the interstellar medium, intergalactic medium, hot stars, and cosmology.

Jon A. Morse (NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center)

Jon Morse is a Harvard graduate, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in 1992. His research interests include studies of star formation, high-mass stars, supernovae and supernova remnants, and active galaxies. He is also the Project Scientist for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph instrument

J. Michael Shull (University of Colorado)

Dr. Shull's research interests lie in theoretical astrophysics and UV/X-ray space astronomy. Recent areas of study include theoretical modeling of the First Stars, Galaxy Formation, and Reionization of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), spectroscopic studies of quasars, interstellar gas, and the low-redshift IGM, including a baryon census and abundance studies of Lyman-alpha and O VI absorbers, infalling Galactic high-velocity clouds, and interstellar molecular hydrogen in the disk/halo, Galactic supernova remnants and shocks, superbubbles, quasar spectra and outflows, and extra-solar comet clouds.

Theodore P. Snow (University of Colorado)

My research interests include obsrvational studies ofinterstellar gas and dust, using both space-based and ground-basedtelescopes. I am a member of the science teams for both the FUSEand HST/COS instruments, and am a frequent user of the ARC 3.5-mtelescope. In addition I head a laboratory astrophysics program,housed in the Chemistry Department, to study reaction rates ofmolecules of astrophysical interest.

John T. Stocke (University of Colorado)

John Stocke is an extragalactic observer who uses all manner of space-based and ground-based telescopes to study normal and active galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and intergalactic gas. His primary interests have been in using the Hubble Space Telescope's spectrographs to discover, inventory, and study intergalactic gas clouds and to figure out their relationship to galaxies. This study has led to the first-ever detection of matter in voids. John is a member of the science team building the COS Colorado University and Ball Aerospace.

Jeffrey L. Linsky (JILA/University of Colorado/NIST)

Dr. Linsky's research group, "The Cool Star Mafia" (CSM), analyzes high resolution X-ray and ultraviolet spectra to study the comologically important deuterium abundance of the universe and to infer the physical properties of the local interstellar medium and the outer atmospheres of stars. Spectra obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Far Ultraviolet Spectrograph Explorer (FUSE), and Chandra X-ray Obseratory (CXO), together with radio observations from the Very Large Array (VLA), provide the fundamental data for these studies. These data are compared with stellar atmosphere models, radiative transfer calculations of spectral line profiles, and plasma spectroscopy codes to obtain physical models of the emitting plasmas.

Sara R. Heap (NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center)

Sally Heap attended Wellesley College as an undergraduate degree and then went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to get her Ph.D. After graduating, she began work at the Goddard Space Flight Center, where she has worked for the past 30 years. Heap focuses her research on hot stars, and she stays close to the skies even in her spare time, when she likes to pilot her small two-seater-plane.

Claus Leitherer (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Claus Leitherer was born in Germany, and attended Heidelberg University for his B.Sc., and M.Sc. degrees in physics/math, and a Ph.D. and posdoctoral fellowship in astronomy. After a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Unioversoty of COlorado at Boulder, he joined the staff of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore MD in 1988 and has been there since.

Blair D. Savage (University of Wisconsin)


Blair D. Savage is the Karl G. Jansky Professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Savage received the B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1964, the M.A. and Ph.D. in Astronomy from Princeton University in 1966 and 1967. Savage joined the astronomy faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968 and served as Chair from 1982 -1985. He is currently working with UV spectra obtained by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and is on the science team of the Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite which was launched in June 1999. He is a member of the science team for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph which will be placed aboard the HST in 2003.

Oswald H. Siegmund (University of California – Berkeley)

Dr. Siegmund is an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Astronomy Department. He is also an associate director of Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory and the experimental astrophysics group leader. Dr. Siegmund has participated in the development and application of a number of rocket, shuttle, and satellite instruments, and technology programs, including instruments for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer mission, the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite, and others. His instrumentation systems experience encompasses scintillators, phosphors, proportional counters, image intensifiers, photocathodes, microchannel plates, electronic readout systems, charge and time encoding electronics, and supporting analysis tools.

Barry Welsh (University of California – Berkeley)

Barry Welsh, a senior research scientist at UC-Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, is a well-regarded investigator of the interstellar medium

Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute)

Dr. Alan Stern is a planetary scientist and astrophysicist, an author, and the Director of the Southwest Research Institute's Department of Space Studies in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Stern is an avid researcher whose work has taken him to numerous astronomical observatories, to the south pole, and to the upper atmosphere aboard high performance military aircraft. Masters and Doctorate degrees (1989) from the University of Colorado.

John Andrews (Southwest Research Institute)

A member of the Department of Space Science at Southwest Research Institute, his research interests include Project Management and Systems Engineering. He is an Experiment Manager with the COS team.

The science objective is to find answers to the origin of large-scale structure and intergalactic medium; the formation, evolution, and ages of galaxies; the origins of stars and planets; and the cold interstellar medium.COS will be almost 20 times more sensitive in the far-ultraviolet than earlier (HST) ultraviolet spectrographs, and will be able to observe distant quasars too faint for detection by previous spectrographs.

Ball Aerospace Engineers/Astronomers on the COS team include:

Kenneth R. Brownsberger (Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation)
Research Interests include Hardware I&T and Flight Software. He is a Software Scientist with the COS IDT.

Dennis C. Ebbets (Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation)
Spectroscopic Analysis, High-mass Stars . He is a Calibration Scientist & Science Team Member with COS. Instrument Development

Erik Wilkinson (Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation)
Instrument Implementation, Stellar Atmospheres. Spectrograph Scientist & Science Team Member

COS at Ball Aerospace