- Robert Quimby
Robert Quimby received his Ph.D. in
Astronomy from theUniversity of Texas at Austin . As a lead member of theTexas Supernova Survey , Quimby and his team used the relatively small 18-inch ROTSE-IIIb robotic telescope on McDonald Observatory’s Mount Fowlkes, along with a program he designed to track supernovae. In 2005, Quimby discoveredSN2005ap , at this writing the brightest explosion ever recorded. Quimby measured the burst at 100 billion times the luminosity of our sun, at a distance of 4.7 billion light years. As a comparison, this supernova occurred 160 million years before the formation of theEarth . Quimby continues his research at theCalifornia Institute of Technology inPasadena ,California .From 1994-1995, Quimby played trombone with the ska band
Reel Big Fish .See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071016085212.htm.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.