|
David Knight Lynch,
Aerospace Corporation
Last updated: October 2001
E-mail: david.k.lynch [at] aero.org
Homepage
Brief Biographical Information:
David K. Lynch is a senior scientist at The Aerospace Corporation where he
specializes in infrared astronomy and atmospheric optics. He received a B.S.
in Astrophysics in 1969 from Indiana University and a Ph.D. in Astronomy in
1975 from the University of Texas in Austin. He has held faculty or research
positions at the California Institute of Technology, Univ.
California/Berkeley, Hughes Research Laboratory and The Aerospace
Corporation. Dr. Lynch has published over 130 scientific papers and ten books
or conferences proceedings. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America
and he has been Principal Investigator on a variety of NSF, NASA, DoD, NOAA
and DoE programs.
Dr Lynch recently edited CIRRUS, a book devoted entirely to cirrus clouds
(Oxford University Press) and wrote (with Bill Livingston of the Kitt Peak
National Observatory) the widely-acclaimed book Color and Light in Nature
(Cambridghe University Press). Recently he organized the NASA conference
Thermal Emission Spectroscopy and Analysis of Dust, Disks and Regoliths,
and co-edited of the proceedings (Astronomical Socity of the Pacific) San
Francisco (1999).
Research Interests:
- Light scattering and thermal emission from dust grains
- comets
- cirrus clouds
- Unusual Phenomena
- Co-Organiser of the Aerospace Corporation Leonid Program
Research on Leonid MAC:
Mid-Infrared spectroscopy of meteors
Related studies of the leonids in November 1998:
Lynch D.K., Russell R.W., Sitko M., 1998, "Thermal Infrared Spectroscopy of the
Leonid Meteor Parent Body, Comet Tempel-Tuttle". In: Proceedings Leonid Meteoroid
Storm and Satellite Threat Conference, AIAA, Manhattan Beach, California, USA (April 1998).
I helped install and operate the Aerospace BASS spectrometer. The deployment in
the 1998 Leonid MAC was specifically designed to study persistent train emission.
No persistent train was observed in our field of view during the mission. The 1999
effort targeted the meteor mid-IR spectroscopy, but no meteor passed the narrow
field of view. This year's observing strategy is to enhance the likelyhood of a
detection and keep the flexibility to look at persistent trains.
|
