BRIAN M.

 PATTEN


Astronomer
Harvard-Smithsonian CfA


Education

B.S. in Physics, 1986, Iowa State University
M.S. in Astrophysics, 1989, Iowa State University
Ph.D. in Astronomy, 1995, University of Hawaii

 Contact Information

If you have a need to contact me, you may use the following information,

60 Garden Street, MS-65
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 384-8209
bpatten<at>cfa<dot>harvard<dot>edu

 About

I have been an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics since 1998, employed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). My primary duties are to support and conduct science programs as a member of the Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC instrument team (from 1998 - present) and to provide support for the SWAS mission (from 1999 - 2006). From 2006 - 2009, I served the community as the Program Director for Education and as the Program Director for Galactic Astronomy in the Division of Astronommical Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

For SWAS (the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite), I provided mission operations and data analysis support for the SWAS Science Operations Center at SAO. The latter half of the mission I served as the archive scientist, preparing and distributing SWAS data products for the mission to the public access sites. I also maintained the the SWAS WWW site at SAO.

For the Spitzer Space Telescope I carried out several In-Orbit Checkout and Science Verification tasks for the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), an SAO project, following the Spitzer launch. I also serve as the scientific lead for several Spitzer Guaranteed Time Observer science programs.



Research Interests

My primary research interests are in very low mass stars and brown dwarfs and in gravitational microlensing. Brown dwarfs are objects of sub-stellar mass made of highly compressed hydrogen and helium (and a trace of other elements). These objects are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion reactions in their cores and thus are not considered stars, though they do glow from the heat of their formation. Brown dwarfs may represent a kind of transition object between stars and what we think of as planets and can probably tell us a great deal about formation and fundamental nature of both.

For gravitational microlensing, I am interested specifically in determining the nature of the lenses in the bone fide microlensing events seen towards the Large Magellanic Cloud during the MACHO survey. The lenses can tell us a great deal about the nature of the stucture of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as providing us with a probe of the contents of our galaxy's halo.

I am also interested in the evolution of coronal X-ray emission levels and rotation rates of young, low-mass stars, similar to our own Sun. How these stars evolve both on the main sequence and in the pre-main sequence phase of evolution tells us about the evolution of magnetic dynamos in these kinds of stars and something about the past history of our own star, the Sun.

Publications

The easiest way to look at my publications is to make use of the NASA ADS Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstract Service.

Learn more about ...

  • The Smithsonian Institution

  • The SWAS Mission

  • The Spitzer Space Telescope

  • The Infrared Array Camera on Spitzer

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