Dr. Daniel P. Marrone I've moved to Arizona. For more recent information, see here Assistant Professor University of Arizona Email: dmarrone@email.arizona.edu

Me, at 18,000 feet (5500 meters) in Chile.

Sep 2006: Submillimeter Polarimetry of Sagittarius A*

May 2004: First ever ground-based observations in the 1.3 THz atmospheric window!

On the morning of May 27 the RLT made the first observations of a spectral line through the 1.3 THz atmospheric window. The J=11-10 transition of CO at 1.26 THz was observed in M17, along with two lower transitions (9-8 and 7-6). These three lines reside in three different atmospheric windows; only the lowest of these (the 850 GHz window) is available for observations at other telescopes. Supra-terahertz windows such as these are astronomically interesting because they provide access to emission from many ions and molecules not available at other frequencies, as well as new transitions of well-studied species. An example is the 1.37 THz ground-state transition of H2D+. This moleculular ion traces the chemical reactions responsible for complex molecule formation occuring deep within cold molecular clouds. The only strong transition of this molecule available at other sites (at 372 GHz) has a lower-state energy of 60 K, far too high to be strongly excited in cold clouds.

Current Work

	Receiver Lab Telescope The world's highest frequency (>1 THz) radio telescope. Used for the first ground-based detections of lines between 1.2 and 1.5 THz.
	Submillimeter Array A submillimeter interferometer on Mauna Kea. I am working on hardware to allow polarization measurements in multiple submillimeter bands.
	Publication search: ADS astro-ph

Previous Work

	Archeops A balloon-borne CMB experiment. The topic of my undergraduate thesis.
	Polatron A CMB polarization experiment that once hoped to observe from the Owens Valley Radio Observatory.
	EXIST The Energetic X-Ray Imaging Survey Telescope, partially under development at the CfA.