The Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula, dubbed “The Pillars of Creation,” is one of the most famous astronomical images ever taken.

Before launch, the Hubble Space Telescope was being touted as the greatest advance in astronomy since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the heavens. But it didn’t take long to discover that it had a serious flaw. Hubble’s mirror was exquisite. It was just the wrong shape, leaving it unable to make sharp images of the heavens.

Some of the most interesting ideas come when people from very different backgrounds talk to each other. An example of this involves some work that I undertook along with meteoriticists (scientists who study meteorites) at ASU. Meteorites are fragments left over from the time when the Solar System formed, 4.5 billion years ago.

The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova – the explosion of a massive, luminous star – observed by Chinese astrologers in 1054 AD. And to astrophysicists, the Crab is one of the most important objects in the sky.

This page covers a few of my scientific accomplishments. Over the course of my scientific career I was involved in a host of fascinating and important projects.

More often that not the chasm that seems to exist between the scientist and the nonscientist is one of language. But it is possible to communicate across such boundaries. It was with that in mind that I took on the task of writing what became a very successful introductory astronomy textbook, 21^st Century Astronomy.