Research Achievements
- Discovered the companion star in He3-1357 (the Stingray Nebula)
- Obtained the first spatially resolved images of the Stingray
Nebula showing, more clearly than ever before seen, the collimation
mechanism producing bipolar outflows
- Obtained the first visual image of Mira B (the companion star to
Omicron Ceti)
- Calculated the Stingray Nebula's radius, expansion age, ionized
mass, core mass and luminosity
- Imaged the inner torus surrounding the post-AGB star He3-1475,
and measured extremely high velocities in its jets
- Developed a self-consistent model for He3-1475, showing that it
links OH/IR stars having extreme outflow velocities with highly bipolar
planetary nebulae
- Obtained the first spatially-resolved images of the planetary
nebula M 1-58
- Discovered the torus and other circumstellar matter in the
planetary nebula Hu 2-1
- Imaged the proto-planetary nebula IRAS 17441-2411, showing
bipolar lobes on either side of a circumstellar disk
- Produced numerical hydrodynamic models of planetary nebulae with
a variety of initial conditions
- Demonstrated the progression of H2 dissociation
during the
earliest stages of nebular evolution
- Showed how nebular velocity, density, fractional ionization,
and fraction of gas in molecules vary with time
- Demonstrated the development of linear and non-linear v-r
relations
- Showed how the brightness of a planetary nebula varies over
time during the early evolutionary stages
- Demonstrated the development of doubly-peaked radial density
profiles
- Derived model emission-line profiles; showed how single-,
double-, and triple-peaked profiles can be produced; showed how both
sharply-peaked and flat-topped profiles can occur
- Demonstrated pitfalls when interpreting emission-line
profiles, particularly when determining expansion velocities
- Showed that H-alpha and microwave subflares could be caused by a
distant solar flare (at the remote footpoint of a magnetic loop)
- Showed that 5 GHz solar radio bursts are co-spatial with hard
x-ray bursts (suggesting repeated accelerations of electrons within the
same magnetic trap)
- Detected polarization changes for successive radio bursts
(indicating variations in the magnetic field geometry)
- Showed that almost all solar regions having reduced microwave
emission lie along magnetic neutral lines and are highly correlated
with Ha filaments
- Made radio observations that ruled out coronal density
reductions as the explanation for solar filaments
- Detected time-variation of solar filaments on 1-day time scales
- Determined the height on the sun of a region of reduced
microwave emission
- Showed the height to be compatible with the bremsstrahlung
absorption model
- Showed the height to be incompatible with a cavity model or
a hot filament model
- Showed that, for NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellites
(TDRS), the solar reflectivity parameter, CR, varies seasonally due to
the changing declination of the sun
- Determined the minimum quantity of tracking data needed for an
accurate determination of the TDRS orbital elements
- Predicted the orbital decay and re-entry of the ISEE-1 and
ISEE-2 spacecraft, showing the cause to be primarily lunar third-body
perturbations
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