Dr. Warren R. Brown
wbrown @ cfa.harvard.edu
(617) 496-7905
60 Garden St, Mail Stop 20, Cambridge, MA 02138

I am an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Like other astronomers, I enjoy studying the rest of the Universe. I am leading the Hypervelocity Star program, a project to find stars ejected from the galaxy by the Milky Way's central massive black hole. I am also leading the Century Survey Galactic Halo project, a project to observe the structure of the outer parts of the Milky Way and directly test the merger picture for galaxy formation. I am heavily involved in building new instruments for the MMT telescope. I am PI of the SAO Widefield InfraRed Camera (SWIRC), a near-infrared imager for the f/5 MMT that I took from proposal to commissioning in 13 months.

Hypervelocity Stars!

In 2005 we discovered the first hypervelocity star, a star whose extreme 1.5 million mph speed can be explained only by an ejection from the Galaxy's central black hole. The hypervelocity star is an outcast, exiled to drift inthe empty depths of space. We designed a targeted survey for hypervelocity stars and have discovered 16 unbound stars, the first two of which are announced here.

These exciting discoveries tell us about the history of stars interacting with central black hole, and the types of stars orbiting around it. To hear the big picture, listen to the Universe Today podcast, the New Scientist podcast, or my big invited talk at the 203rd American Astronomical Society / AAPT 2007 annual meeting.

In 2007 I was awarded Harvard's Bok Prize "for outstanding work in the discovery of hypervelocity stars, a new class of objects in the Milky Way." In 2008 I was awarded the Smithsonian Secretary's Research Prize for the "successful targeted survey for hypervelocity stars." In 2009 hypervelocity stars were featured in Astronomy magazine, Discover magazine, and on The History Channel (episodes "The Milky Way" and "Death Stars" of The Universe series).

This invited review article in the Nov 2008 Galactic Center Newsletter summarizes the current knowledge on hypervelocity stars.

My CURRICULUM VITAE (updated Aug 2009).
Refereed Scientific Publications:

Hypervelocity Stars

  • Runaway Stars, Hypervelocity Stars, and Radial Velocity Surveys .pdf
  • The Anisotropic Spatial Distribution of Hypervelocity Stars .pdf
  • MMT Hypervelocity Star Survey .pdf
  • HVS 7: a chemically peculiar hypervelocity star
  • Hypervelocity Stars: From the Galactic Center to the Halo
  • Hypervelocity Stars. III. The Space Density and Ejection History of Main Sequence Stars from the Galactic Center .pdf
  • Hypervelocity Stars. II. The Bound Population .pdf
  • Hypervelocity Stars. I. The Spectroscopic Survey .pdf
  • Hypervelocity Stars: Predicting the Spectrum of Ejection Velocities .pdf
  • A Successful Targeted Search for Hypervelocity Stars .pdf
  • Discovery of an Unbound Hypervelocity Star in the Milky Way Halo .pdf

    • Century Survey Galactic Halo Project

  • Velocity Dispersion Profile of the Milky Way Halo
  • Do the Nearby Blue Horizontal Branch Stars Belong to the Thick Disk or the Halo?
  • The Century Survey Galactic Halo Project III: A Complete 4300 sq. deg. Survey of Blue Horizontal Branch Stars in the Metal-Weak Thick Disk and Inner Halo .pdf
  • The Century Survey Galactic Halo Project II: Global Properties and the Luminosity Function of Field Blue Horizontal Branch Stars .pdf
  • Mapping the Inner Halo of the Galaxy with 2MASS-Selected Horizontal Branch Candidates .pdf
  • The Century Survey Galactic Halo Project I: Stellar Spectral Analysis .pdf


    • Galaxies

  • MMT Extremely Metal Poor Galaxy Survey I. An Efficient Technique to Identify Metal Poor Galaxies
  • Stellar Velocity Dispersion of the Leo A Dwarf Galaxy
  • SDSS 0809+1729: Connections Between Extremely Metal-Poor Galaxies and Gamma-Ray Burst Hosts
  • V and R-band Galaxy Luminosity Functions and Low Surface Brightness Galaxies in the Century Survey
  • UV Excess Galaxies: Wolf-Rayet Galaxies



    • Instrumentation

  • Smithsonian Widefield Infrared Camera .pdf
  • The Cryogenic Refractive Indices of S-FTM16, a Unique Optical Glass for Near-Infrared Instruments .pdf
  • A Detailed Thermal Analysis of the Binospec Spectrograph
  • SPIE paper on my design recommendations for Binospec





    • Other Stuff

  • The Runaway White Dwarf LP40022 has a Companion
  • The Discovery of a Companion to the Lowest Mass White Dwarf
  • The Lowest Mass White Dwarf
  • Properties of Model Comae around Kuiper Belt and Centaur Objects
  • CCD Photometry of the Centaur 1995 GO





    • Here is a link to my ancient cheat sheet, "Grad Student Time-Saving Tools", that summarizes computer tips for astronomers.

    Pictures: