Once upon a time I wanted to be an astronomer. I studied astronomy and physics at the University of Arizona.

While I was there I had the good fortune to spend a year working for William Hoffmann writing software to help interfometry of lightweight mirrors.

Then I attended graduate school in the Astronomy Department at New Mexico State University.

I started serious research in the cosmology group with Anatoly Klypin. The result was an article in the Astrophysical Journal about the theoretical evolution of galaxy cluster shapes from the past to the present. But cosmology and I did not agree with each other, so I moved on.

My next and final stop was in planetary science with Mark Marley where I worked on a project to detect seismic waves from the impact of Comet Shoemaker/Levy/9 with Jupiter in July 1994. The work was published in Icarus.

It soon became time to research a dissertation topic. You can read my dissertation proposal and my funding proposal to NASA. I fooled them into awarding me $66,000 over 3 years. Since Southern New Mexico is death's waiting room I waived the last 6 months of funding to get out.

From the actual thesis came two papers submitted to Icarus. The first describes the composition of the Uranian atmosphere derived from its reflectance at 1-2.5 microns observed at Apache Point Observatory. Since I'd already left the field, I stopped pushing for the second to be published, but it's a chapter in my dissertation. You can read said dissertation in DVI (without figures) or PS format.

Then I left science and lived happily ever after. Well, not yet, but soon...

Icarus Disclaimers:
This material has been published in Icarus 121:341-350, June 1996 and 132:285-297, April 1998, the only definitive repository of the content that has been certified and accepted after peer review. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by Academic Press. This material may not be copied or reposted without explicit permission. (Copyright 1996 and 1998 by Academic Press). See the entire Icarus library at IDEAL.