Leads

LDT Leads are responsible for the overall operation of the facility.  Please direct high-level inquiries to these individuals, who will pass along questions to the appropriate staff members as needed.

Dr. Stephen Levine - Astronomer, LDT Scientist, Director of Education

Dr. Kyler Kuehn - Director of Technology

Operations Staff

Operations Staff are responsible for the safe operation of the telescope at night.  Remote observers should contact their operator(s) no less than a full day ahead of their observing session to confirm when and how they will be in contact.  The semester science calendar contains the list of operators for a given night.  The night operations staff may be collectively contacted at (ldtoperator at lowell dot edu).

Dr. José Fernández – LDT Night Operations Manager

Beck Maier – LDT Operator

Ishara Nisley – LDT Operator

Benjamin Shafransky – LDT Operator

Cecilia Siqueiros – LDT Operator




Instrument & Engineering Staff 

The Instrument and Engineering Staff comprise the LDT day crew.  These individuals keep the LDT running smoothly through regular monitoring, maintenance, and upgrading of all telescope and facility systems.

Lowell Instrument Group:

Dr. Ryan Hamilton - Head of Instrumentation

Tom Bida - Senior Instrument Scientist

Michael Collins - Electronics Specialist

Ben Hardesty - Instrument Scientist

Ben Reed Instrument Specialist

Dyer Lytle - Software Engineer

Thomas Kelley - Research Assistant, Optics and Photonics Applications Laboratory

LDT Engineering Group:

Frank Cornelius - Engineering Manager

Dr. Georgi Mandushev - Research Scientist and Facility Software Support

Mike Sweaton - LDT Electronic Engineer

Jake Tiegs - Mechanical Technician

 

Science Support

The LDT provides a Support Astronomer for assisting with observation planning, first-night observing support, and general questions about the facility.  The LDT does not operate in 'queue' or other non-classical observing modes at this time, and the Support Astronomer cannot serve as the observer's proxy during assigned nights.

Dr. Timothy Ellsworth-Bowers - Support Astronomer




Instrument Leads

Each of the instruments available for use at LDT has a main contact person.  For Facility Instruments, observers are encouraged to carefully read through the instrument manual, and contact the instrument lead in instances of technical challenges or needed changes in the manual.  The use of Visitor and PI instruments must be coordinated through the listed instrument lead, as the LDT staff do not directly support these instruments.

LDT Facility Instruments:

LMI (Large Monolithic Imager) - Dr. Phil Massey

DeVeny Optical Spectrograph - Tom Bida

NIHTS (Near IR High Throughput Spectrograph) - Dr. Nick Moskovitz

Visitor / PI Instruments:

EXPRES - Dr. Debra Fischer (Yale) / Dr. John Michael Brewer (SFSU)

POETS - Dr. Stephen Levine (Lowell)

QWSSI - Dr. Gerard van Belle (Lowell)

RIMAS (coming soon) - Dr. Alexander Kutyrev (GSFC/UMd)




Logistics Contacts

The Lowell Observatory IT and Business Office Staff can assist with issues relevant to observing at the LDT.

IT issues - John Kullman, or IT .at. lowell.edu

Lodging - Dr. José Fernandez

General - Catie Blazek


If you want to contact one of these people, try constructing their email as "first initial + last name at lowell dot edu". If that does not work, email (tac at lowell dot edu) and we will help you reach the right person.

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