The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Daniel Castro

Center for Astrophysics

Daniel Castro

daniel.castro@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Dr Castro is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), where he works as part of the Chandra X-ray Center Science Operations Team (SOT), specifically as a scientist in the SOT Mission Planning Team. In addition to his scientific research focusing on the remnants of supernova explosions, especially using X-ray and gamma-ray observations, Dr. Castro has taken an active role in helping develop the next generation of space-based gamma-ray observatories (such as the All-Sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory, AMEGO), as well as serving as working group member in the collaborations behind the design of the future Athena and Lynx X-ray instrument projects. Dr. Castro is also committed to making the CfA, and the wider astronomy community, an equitable and inclusive environment.

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

Chandra

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship X-ray observatory, providing essential data on everything from the environment surrounding newborn stars to the emissions from hot plasma inside galaxy clusters. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), as part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, manages Chandra’s day-to-day operations, providing spacecraft control, observation planning, and data processing for astronomers. Chandra is one of NASA’s orbiting Great Observatories, along with the Hubble.

Visit the Chandra Website

Lynx X-Ray Observatory

The Lynx X-ray Observatory is a proposed X-ray space telescope, designed to be the next generation following NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Athena Telescope. This observatory will be able to take images of a larger area of the sky in X-ray light with better resolution than any existing telescope, allowing astronomers to study the first supermassive black holes, the hot gas surrounding galaxies as they evolve, and radiation from the earliest stars. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and other universities are presenting Lynx to NASA for consideration in the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a proposed launch date in the mid-2030s.

Visit the Lynx X-Ray Observatory Website