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Latest News: Team Including TSU Astronomers Discover Planetary System Much Closer to Earth

 

 

Henry

Dr. Gregory Henry
Research Specialist
Email: gregory.w.henry@gmail.com
Office: room 254 in the Research and Sponsored Programs building
Automated Astronomy Research Group
Phone: (615)277-1616

"The planet's most experienced user of robotic telescopes"

Gregory Henry's research interests include automated astronomy, high-precision photometry, solar-type stars, exoplanetary systems, chromospherically active stars, and pulsating variable stars.

Gregory Henry has served as a Principle Astronomer at Fairborn Observatory, the first totally automatic observatory in the world. The founder of Fairborn Observatory, Russell Genet, writes, "Greg, who has managed multiple remote telescopes at the Fairborn Observatory for over a quarter of a century, is the planet's most experienced user of robotic telescopes."ref The director of Fairborn Observatory, Lou Boyd, writes, "Greg Henry is the only human I know who handles several telescopes with one person doing all those functions."ref In 1999, with the equipment at Fairborn, Dr. Henry discovered an exoplanet (a planet outside of our solar system) entitled HD 209458. This planet was the first known transiting exoplanet; or the first exoplanet seen passing over its star. This discovery constituted the first photographic evidence of planets outside of our solar system. As Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at U.C. Burkeley, points out "This is the first independent confirmation ... that our indirect evidence for planets really is due to planets."ref

In October 2014, another breakthrough exoplanetary discovery attained with the help of Dr. Henry and the Fairborn Observatory was announced. In collaboration with the Hubble telescope, WASP-43b became the first exoplanet to have a full and detailed weather mapping. This discovery, which included the efforts of Center of Excellence researchers Greg Henry and Micheal Williamson, revealed minute details of WASP-43b's forecast and broadened the sample size from which planetary physics pulls.


Publications via Astrophysics Data System; (at least 447 available)
Publications via Microsoft AcademicSearch; (at least 279 available) (at least 146 available)
 


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