The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Mark Witinski

Center for Astrophysics

Program Manager

Mark Witinski

mark.witinski@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Mark Witinski is the Program Manager for Giant Magellan Telescope Instruments at SAO. He is working with the Instrument PIs and SAO Engineering to develop two first-light science instruments and the adaptive optics platform for the GMT. Witinski earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at Cornell followed by a Postdoc at Harvard in the atmospheric research group of Prof. Jim Anderson. There, he developed and deployed optical instrumentation for trace gas observations aboard Stratospheric aircraft. He is a Fulbright Scholar whose other research interests include lasers and optics, spectral imaging, chemical detection and sensors. Most recently, he was a Program Manager and Principal Technical Staff at Draper in Cambridge. He lives in Cambridge where he enjoys fiction, road trips, word puzzles, live music and fixing watches.

Ph.D. Physical Chemistry

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

MMT Observatory

The MMT Observatory is the premier visible-light and infrared telescope jointly managed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and the University of Arizona. Located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona, this 6.5-meter (21 foot) telescope is used to study objects across the field of astronomy, from the Solar System to distant galaxies. The MMT has provided a testbed for new telescope technologies developed by scientists and engineers at the CfA and the University of Arizona.

Visit the MMT Website