The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Dan Baldwin

Center for Astrophysics

Structural Engineer

Dan Baldwin

dbaldwin@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Dan is an aerospace structures engineer with experience in design, analysis, and optimization of structures for manned space vehicles, aircraft, road vehicles, and precision optical instruments. He has experience in developing designs from a clean sheet of paper, including the optical bench and major optical assemblies for the G-CLEF spectrograph, frame and suspension for electric vehicles, and sizing of composite stiffened shells for Space Shuttle External Tank. Dan is an active participant in high speed time trials with COM Sports Car Club where he has won 9 class championship and one overall drivers championship. He has also raced motorcycles with USCRA where he has won one class championship.

M.S. Aerospace Engineering

Telescopes and Instruments

Magellan Telescopes

The twin Magellan Telescopes in Chile are each 6.5 meter optical telescopes. These telescopes are both equipped with instruments to take images and spectra of light from a wide variety of astronomical sources, including exoplanet systems, star-forming regions, supernova remnants, and interacting galaxies. The Magellan Telescopes — named Baade and Clay — are hosted at the Las Campanas Observatory and are operated by a consortium of institutions, including the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Carnegie Institution for Science, University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, CfA scientists and engineers provided a wide field f/5 focal system (including secondary mirror and corrective optics), and a powerful astronomical camera for use at the Clay telescope.

Visit the Magellan Telescopes Website

Giant Magellan Telescope

Is Earth unique, or are there other planets with life in the Milky Way? To answer this question and many others, astronomers need larger and more sensitive observatories than anything we currently have. For that reason, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is collaborating with a number of other institutions around the world to create the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), currently under construction in Chile. The GMT will consist of seven large mirrors acting in concert as one giant telescope 80 feet across. That large size provides an unprecedented view of the sky and the ability to detect the chemical composition of exoplanet atmospheres. Like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the GMT will be a powerful tool across the field of astronomy, providing insights into the formation of planets, the structure of galaxies, and the evolution of the universe itself.

Visit the GMT Website