Charles L. Joseph (Chuck) -- Assoc. Research Professor

Department of Physics and Astronomy
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
136 Frelinghuysen Rd., Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019
Phone: 445-3704 Email: cjoseph@physics.rutgers.edu

Proposed NASA Balloon and Long Duration Balloon Missions in the Post-HST Era are capable of providing UV-Visible wavelength observations with resolutions comparable to Hubble. These concept missions are ideal for studying Lyman-alpha and O VI emission (0.4 < z < 1.6) in Circumgalactic Ly-alpha Haloes, AGN outflows, sellar evolution via binaries, and Galaxy Dynamics PDF File (2 Meg)

The Global Warming Threat, an excerpt from my book entitled: Faith, Reason, and Knowledge: The Looming Future in America reveals the magnitude of the crisis. This unpublished book deals with the impediments that certain religious sectarians represent in finding solutions to global warming and other serious problems of the 21st century.

Research interests:	Invited Reviews - UV Detectors:
Ly-alpha clouds, Galaxy Evolution PDF (2Meg)	From X-rays to X band, 2000, "An Overview of UV Technologies"
Interstellar Medium	SPIE, 1997, "Advances in UV Image Sensors and Assoc. Technologies"
UV Image Sensors	Experimental Astronomy, 1995, "UV Image Sensors and Associated Technologies"
Proposed Long-Duration Balloon Mission	Rev. of Sci. Instrum., 1998, Stability Coefficients for the STIS MAMA Detector

Research Activities

My research interests include the interstellar medium, studies of supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies, galaxy evolution, and technology development for optical/ultraviolet space instrumentation. I was the Detector Scientist and CoI on the the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) installed on the Hubble. Spare MAMA detectors from that program are also in use in the Advance Camera for Surveys as well as a future Hubble instrument named COS. The supermassive black hole data from the STIS key project was used to reveal galaxy stellar rotation and dispersion curves. These data provided evidence on the frequency of central black holes as well as perhaps their origin. Currently, we are proposing to develop high altitude balloon missions. Advanced optical techniques will enable data collection with resolutions approaching that of the Hubble Space Telescope. If funded, these balloons will provide unique data, not available on any existing or planned mission. New technology initiatives include the development of ultraviolet detectors made of III-Nitrides, which offer significant performance improvements over existing UV image sensors.

Last updated April 18, 2008