Research Interests

Phil got his BS and MS from Caltech (1975), and his PhD from the Univ. of Colorado (1980). He held a postdoctoral appointment at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (1981-1983), and then joined the staff of Kitt Peak National Observatory in 1984 as a staff astronomer. His duties there included looking after the 4-meter telescope as its telescope scientist. He analyzed the termal environment in order to improve the delivered image quality (seeing). Phil joined the Lowell Observatory staff in September, 2000.

Phil's current and past research interests include:

• The Evolution of Massive Stars
• The Local Group Galaxy Survey (LGGS)
  • Stacked images
• Discovery of the first Thorne-Zytkow Object
  • Our paper
• Search for Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Initial Mass Function
• Young Clusters
• Local Group Galaxies
• Instrumentation and Data Reduction
• Astronomical Spectroscopy
• The Large Monolithic Imager
• The spectrum of the night sky
• Re-commissioning the Hydra fiber positioner at WIYN
• CCD Data: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (an oldie but a goodie)