Dr. William Oegerle Laboratory for Astronomy & Solar Physics Code 680 NASA/GSFC Greenbelt, MD 20771 tel: 301-286-3441 fax: 301-286-1753 e-mail: william.r.oegerle@nasa.gov

Associate Lab Chief, Laboratory for Astronomy & Solar Physics
Head, UV/Optical Astronomy Branch

BRIEF BIO

Oegerle's PhD thesis was on theoretical modeling of stellar winds. However, he was soon lured to observational astronomy at Kitt Peak National Observatory, where he spent the last couple of years of graduate school. His first postdoctoral position was at Princeton University, working on the Copernicus mission (a space telescope with ultraviolet spectrometers for studying the interstellar medium). In 1982, he joined the Space Telescope Science Institute as an assistant astronomer working on the Science operations ground system for the HST. In 1994, he became Deputy Project Scientist and Chief of Science Operations for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) at Johns Hopkins University. After the successful development, launch and science operations of FUSE, he joined NASA/GSFC in December 2000 as Head of the UV/Optical Astronomy Branch. He was subsequently appointed Chief of LASP in 2003. His primary scientific interests include the formation, dynamics and evolution of clusters of galaxies, large scale structure in the universe, and the physics of the interstellar and intergalactic medium and their relation to galaxy evolution.

EDUCATION

B.S., Physics, University of Florida, 1972
Ph.D., Astrophysics, University of Massachusetts, 1977

RECENT COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

2003: Organizer of Topical Session at Nashville AAS meeting on the Future of UV/Optical
            Astronomy from Space
2002 to present: Deputy Chair of NASA's Science Archives Working Group
2002: Organizer of Session on UV/optical Astronomy at SPIE meeting in Waikoloa, Hawaii
2001 to present: Member, NASA's Origins Subcommittee

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• clusters of galaxies, observational cosmology
• galaxy evolution and star formation
• large scale structure in the universe
• interstellar and intergalactic medium
• UV spectroscopy, multifiber spectroscopy

Dynamics of Galaxy Clusters

Redshift studies of galaxy clusters are being performed with multi-fiber spectrographs at Steward Observatory and KPNO. John Hill (Steward Obs) and I have just finished a survey of 25 cD clusters (50-100 redshifts per cluster) to study the dynamics of clusters with kinematically peculiar cD galaxies. The final paper in the series: Dynamics of cD Clusters of Galaxies IV. Conclusion of a Survey of 25 Abell Clusters" recently appeared in the Astronomical Journal. We (Neal Miller (NRC/GSFC), John Hill, and John Hoessel (U. of Wisconsin)) have begun to extend our dynamical studies of clusters out to z~0.2 with the Hydra multi-fiber spectrometer at the WIYN Observatory. A paper on the dynamics of A2125 with Frazer Owen was recently submitted to the Astronomical Journal.

Large Scale Structure at z=1

Postman, Oegerle, Lauer and Hoessel have completed a deep I-band survey (I<23.5) of a 16 sq. degree area of sky at the KPNO 4meter telescope to study large scale structure at z ~ 1. This is the largest contiguous area of the sky ever mapped to this depth. This work was recently highlighted in a Dec 1997 NOAO newsletter article: "A Billion Pixels, Nearly a Million Galaxies". See our Deeprange Project web page at ST ScI (administered by Marc Postman, PI). The first paper from this survey entitled "Clustering at High Redshift: Precise Constraints from a Deep, Wide-Area Survey" appeared in the October 1998 ApJ. A subsequent paper is "Observational Constraints on Higher Order Clustering up to z~1". The catalog paper of the Deeprange field has recently been completed and is available at astro-ph: "The KPNO/Deeprange Distant Cluster Survey: I. The Catalog & the Space Density of Intermediate Redshift Clusters"

The Hot Intergalactic Medium

With collaborators Todd Tripp (Princeton), Ken Sembach(STScI) and Blair Savage, studies of the warm/hot (100,000 K) IGM are being conducted with FUSE, through detections of OVI absorption in the IGM toward bright QSOs. This hot gas, which is tenuous and not easily detected in x-rays, may contain a significant source of baryons in the local universe. Recent papers include: "The Ionization and Metallicity of the Intervening O VI Absorber at z = 0.1212 in the Spectrum of H1821+643" by Tripp et al (2001), and "Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the Intergalactic and Interstellar Absorption Toward 3C 273" by Sembach et al (2001).

Publications at the ADS website.

See the LANL preprint archives for recent papers and preprints.

Other links of interest

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