Terry Herter

Professor of Astronomy
Director, Center for Radiophysics and Space Research
Ph.D. 1981 (University of Rochester)

Campus Address:
202 Space Sciences Building
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Phone: 607-255-5898

Specialty Areas: Infrared and Optical Astronomy

Research Projects: FORECAST: A Widefield Infrared Camera for SOFIA, Triple Spec: A Facility Near-Infrared Spectrograph for the Palomar 200-inch Telescope.

Biography: Terry Herter's interests include normal and starburst galaxies, circumstellar disks, and the galactic center. In the recent past he has also studied HII (ionized hydrogen) regions and planetary nebulae. From time to time, he has dabbled in planetary astronomy: observing planets, moons and comets. He has also working on the development and testing of infrared arrays for ground-based, airborne, and space-based astronomy.

He is Principal Investigator on a first light instrument on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The instrument, called FORCAST, is a camera that will be used to image star formation regions, debris disks around nearby stars, and other galaxies. SOFIA is scheduled to begin operations in 2005.

He is a co-investigator on the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS), an instrument on the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). SIRTF launched on Aug. 25, 2003! Go to the SIRTF link for the lastest news. He is a member of the IRS disk and extragalactic teams.

He is also involved in an effort by Cornell to build a large telescope in the high Atacama desert of Northern Chile and serves on a national committee (GSMT-SWG) summarizing the scientific potential of large ground based telescopes.

He is the lead on TripleSpec, a 0.85 - 2.5 micron spectrograph for the Palomar 200-inch telescope. TripleSpec is a collaboration between Cornell, University of Virginia, Caltech, and JPL. It will obtain a full spectrum at a resolution of 2700 with a 1 x 30 arcsecond slit.

Selected Publications: -Radio-selected Galaxies in Very Rich Cluster at z < 0.25: I. Multi-wavelength Observations and Data Reduction Techniques, G. E. Morrison, F. N. Owen, M. J. Ledlow, W. C. Keel, J. M. Hill, W. Voges, and T. Herter, 2003, ApJS, 146, 267.
-FORCAST: The Faint Object Infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, Keller, Luke D., Herter, Terry L., Stacey, Gordon J., Gull, George E., Schoenwald, Justin, Pirger, Bruce, Nikola, Thomas, 2003, SPIE, 4857, 29.
-Large Atacama Telescope (LAT) project, Herter, Terry L., Brandl, Bernhard R., Eikenberry, Stephen S., Giovanelli, Riccardo, Keller, Luke D., Lester, Daniel F.; Sebring, Thomas A., Stacey, Gordon J. 2003, SPIE, 4837, 1.
-The I-Band Tully-Fisher Relation for Sc Galaxies: Optical Imaging Data, Haynes, Martha P.; Giovanelli, Riccardo; Salzer, John J.; Wegner, Gary; Freudling, Wolfram; da Costa, Luiz N.; Herter, Terry; Vogt, Nicole P. 1999, AJ, 117, 1668.
-Mid- and Far-Infrared Hybrid Focal Plane Arrays for Astronomy, T. Herter, T. L. Hayward, J. R. Houck, D. H. Seib, and W. N. Lin 1998, in SPIE Conference 3356, Space Telescopes V.
-The I-Band Tully-Fisher Relation for Cluster Galaxies: A Template Relation, its Scatter and Bias Corrections, R. Giovanelli, M. P. Haynes, T. Herter, N. P. Vogt, Gary Wegner, J. J. Salzer, L. N. Da Costa, W. Freudling 1997, AJ, 113, 53.
-The Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE), H. Schember, J. Kemp, H. Ames, P. Hacking, T. Herter, B. Fafaul, D. Everett, and L. Sparr 1996, in Infrared Technology and Applications XXII Conference, SPIE Proceedings, 2744, 751.
-Detection of Water After the Collision of Fragments G and K of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter,G. L. Bjoraker, S. R. Stolovy, T. L. Herter, G. E. Gull, and B. E. Pirger 1996, Icarus, 121, 411.
-IBC Arrays: Present and Future Prospects, T. Herter, 1994 in Infrared Astronomy with Arrays, ed. I. McLean, (Kluwer: Netherlands), p. 409-417.
-The Rotation Curves of Galaxies at Intermediate Redshift, N. P. Vogt, T. Herter, M. P. Haynes, and S. Courteau 1993, Ap. J. (Letters), 415, L95.
Si:Sb blocked impurity band detectors for infrared astronomy, J. E. Huffman, A. G. Crouse, B. L. Halleck, T. V. Downes, and T. Herter, 1992, J. Appl. Phys., 72, 273.