Spitzer Researcher Named 2007 Scientist of the Year
Written by Linda Vu
Spitzer Science Center
Dr. David Charbonneau was named Discover Magazine's "Scientist of the Year" for his work in detecting and characterizing planets around nearby Sun-like stars. His profile appears in the December issue, which hits newsstands on November 13, 2007.
Charbonneau's ground-breaking research has included several unique results from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In 2005, he was one of the first scientists to detect light coming directly from a planet outside of our solar system. Earlier this year, Charbonneau was a member of two teams studying another world, resulting in one of the first infrared spectra, and temperature maps, of an exoplanet.
He is currently a staff scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.
For more information about these Spitzer exoplanet results see:
- NASA's Spitzer Marks Beginning of New Age of Planetary Science
- NASA Finds Extremely Hot Planet, Makes First Exoplanet Weather Map
- NASA's Spitzer First To Crack Open Light of Faraway Worlds
Harvard-Smithsonian Press Release: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2007/pr200730.html