Dennis Ebbets, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp, debbets@ball.com
Skaggs GC-402, 3:10-3:55 PM
Thursday, June 29, 2000
The Hubble Space Telescope has been the premier instrument of NASA's space astronomy program during the 1990s, and will continue to be for most of the next decade. This talk will describe the design and construction of the hardware, its launch and maintenance in orbit, and its use by astronomers here on Earth. We will discuss some of the important scientific results obtained with Hubble, with an emphasis on topics such as the origin of our and other solar systems, the formation of galaxies and the size and age of the universe as a whole. Observations which have been made at the limits of Hubble's capabilities have motivated plans for an even more powerful follow-on mission, currently known as the Next Generation Space Telescope. NGST will be an international collaboration between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency. It is envisioned to be an 8m class reflector, optimized for infrared imaging and spectroscopy, in orbit around the sun at the L2 Lagrangian point. We will discuss the scientific mission and the current status of the project.
Brief biography of the speaker: Dennis Ebbets is a Systems Engineer at Ball Aerospace Systems Division in Boulder, Colorado. Since joining Ball in 1985 he has worked primarily on science instruments for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and on design studies for other space science missions, including the Next Generation Space Telescope. He is a member of the Investigation Definition Team for two instruments aboard Hubble, the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. Dr. Ebbets holds an undergraduate degree in physics from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado. He is active in several professional societies, including the American Astronomical Society, and the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers. Dennis enjoys the opportunities to communicate the scientific results of NASA programs to the public, and is a frequent speaker at schools, service clubs and professional organizations. He resides in Boulder with his wife and three children.