The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Scott W. Randall

Center for Astrophysics

Astrophysicist, Chandra Science Operations Team

Scott W. Randall

srandall@cfa.harvard.edu

About

I am an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in the High Energy Astrophysics Division, and a member of the Chandra X-ray Observatory Mission Planning Science Operations Team. My research interests include clusters and groups of galaxies, high-energy astrophysics, X-ray astronomy, large-scale structure, cosmology, dark matter, and AGN feedback.

PhD.

Telescopes and Instruments

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

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

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