Experimental Astrophysics 

Office: 3-937 Physics and Astronomy Building
Lab: 6-164 Knudsen Hall
Phone: (310)825-9470 
larkin @ astro.ucla.edu

This is an infrared photo of four members of the NIRC2 instrument team taken through the 10 meter Keck Telescope. We believe we're the first humans ever imaged with a 10 meter telescope. If you look closely in the middle of the image, you can see retroreflections back into the telescope, the AO system and even into the very cold camera dewar.

• Professor within the UCLA Infrared Lab and Astronomy Division.
• Principle Investigator for the IRIS project, an Integral Field Spectrograph for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) .
• Co-Investigator for the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) for the Gemini International Telescopes.
• Principle Investigator for the OSIRIS integral field spectrograph.
• Co-Investigator on the NIRC2 infrared camera for the Keck Adaptive Optics System.
• Principle Investigator for the SHARC infrared camera also for the Keck AO system.
• Co-leader of a large survey to explore galaxy evolution with the Keck Adaptive Optics System: CATS Center for Adaptive Optics Treasury Survey
• Published Research including conference proceedings.

Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

 
I work as an astrophysicist in the Physics and Astronomy Department concentrating on extragalactic astrophyics, adaptive optics (AO) and infrared instrumentation. My students and I were the first to observe faint field galaxies with a Shack-Hartmann AO system in order to directly observe galaxy evolution. This has now developed into a large legacy program as part of the NSF Center for Adaptive Optics to observe deep HST fields with the Keck AO system and ultimately with the OSIRIS integral field spectrograph. I am the PI of OSIRIS which is a new diffraction limited cryogenic spectrograph which can take more than 1000 simultaneous spectra over a rectangular field of view. I'm also a Co-I in a new project (EXAOC) to develop an advanced AO system with the capability to directly image young Jovian planets around nearby stars. My interests in planet detection have grown from work on one of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) architecture teams, and membership in the ORIGINS subcommittee for NASA.  

 Go here for some crash photos demonstrating why astronomy can be a dangerous business.

• McCormick Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago from Oct. 1995-Sept. 1997 working with the Chicago Adaptive Optics Group (ChAOS). The group has designed and built an AO system for the ARC 3.5m telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico. My primary effort went into the design and construction of an infrared camera for taking pictures with the AO system. Old Instrument Photos.

• Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech awarded June, 1996 (defended Oct. 1995). My advisor was Prof. Tom Soifer (see the InfraRed Army's home page) and my thesis involved building a near-infrared spectrograph with Robert Knop and using it to study active galaxies (specifically LINERs) at the Palomar 200inch telescope. I was also involved in near infrared imaging at the W.M. Keck telescope at Mauna Kea Hawaii including deep infrared galaxy counts and the study of gravitational lens systems.
 
• Masters in Physics from Caltech in June, 1992.
 
• B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the California State University at Hayward in June, 1990.

• Jeffrey Chilcote

• Shelley Wright (2008) - Part of the OSIRIS instrument team and she's using it to search for the formation epoch of galactic disks. Currently IRIS postdoc at UC Irvine, but moving in 2009 to UC Berkeley as Hubble Fellow
• Michael McElwain (2008) - Part of the OSIRIS instrument team and completed his thesis directly imaging planetary companions to young nearby stars. Currently Norris Russel Fellow at Princeton but has just received NSF Fellowship as well.
• Matthew Barczys (2007) - Part of OSIRIS instrument team from day 1. Complete his thesis on OSIRIS and the Adaptive Optics imaging of Merging Galaxies. Scientist at Johnson Space Flight Center, Houston.
• Joseph Rhee (2004) - Completed his thesis on Near and Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy of Seyfert Galaxies. Postdoc at the Gemini North Observatory. Now Postdoc at UCLA
• Tiffany Glassman (2002) - Completed her thesis on Morphological Evolution of Distant Galaxies with Adaptive Optics Imaging. Became Postdoc at IPAC. Now Scientist at Northrup Grumman.

• email: larkin @ astro.ucla.edu
• phone: (310) 825-9470
• mail:

        Physics and Astronomy Building
        430 Portola Plaza
        Box 951547
        Los Angeles, CA. 90095-1547