About
John Monnier is an expert in optical/infrared interferometry and is the instrumentalist responsible for MIRC-X (the Michigan Infrared Combiner + Exeter upgrade) and MYSTIC (Michigan Young STar Imager at CHARA), beam combiners that allow all six of the telescopes at Georgia State University’s CHARA Array to work together. He is interested in the direct detection of exoplanets and in studying how planets form in circumstellar disks. Professor Monnier is also developing technologies for a future space interferometer, beginning with a formation-flying cubesat mission.
Notable Results
Monnier’s group was the first to combine four or more telescopes in the infrared, allowing them to move from simple modeling of astronomical sources to reconstructing actual high-precision images with milliarcsecond resolution. They were the first to image the surfaces of main-sequence stars other than the Sun, including rapid rotators and very close binaries. With the upgraded MIRC-X and the MYSTIC instruments, we now are imaging the inner astronomical unit of planet-forming disks.
In recognition of his impact, Professor Monnier was awarded the 2019 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation and was named an AAS Legacy Fellow in the Inaugaural 2020 Class.
More Info
For more information on Monnier’s instrumentation projects, see the CHARA page.
Background
1999-2002 Fellow, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; 2002-present, Astronomy Professor at University of Michigan; 2019 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation
Publications
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