Barth Netterfield

Calvin Barth Netterfield (born 29 April 1968), known as Barth Netterfield, is a Canadian astrophysicist, and a Professor in the Department of Astronomy and the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto.[1] He is a leading expert in the development of balloon-borne telescopes.[2][3] These are astrophysical experiments that are lifted into the stratosphere by high-altitude balloons where they conduct observations that would be hindered by atmospheric interference if done on the ground. Netterfield is primarily known for his work in observational cosmology, specifically in developing instrumentation to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.[1] Most notably, he was a key member of the instrument team for BOOMERANG, the experiment that made one of the first accurate determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.[3][4][5] More recently, he has delved into the field of submillimetre astronomy and the physics of star formation, through his involvement with the BLAST telescope.[6] Netterfield was featured prominently in BLAST!, a documentary film about the 2005 and 2006 flights of BLAST from Sweden and Antarctica.[7]

Barth Netterfield
CitizenshipCanadian
American
Alma materPrinceton University
Known forBalloon-borne telescopes, observational cosmology
Scientific career
FieldsAstrophysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto
Doctoral advisorLyman Page
Websitewww.astro.utoronto.ca/~netterfield

Early life and education

Netterfield grew up in Surrey, British Columbia. He developed an interest in astronomy from an early age simply by going outside and looking at the stars.[8] His interest in physics was also fostered by his Grade 10 mathematics teacher, who encouraged him to read about relativity.[8] Netterfield graduated high school from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Secondary_School, Surrey, British Columbia, in 1986. Netterfield eventually moved to Minnesota where he earned a B.S. degree in physics from Bethel College. He went on to do his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University under the supervision of Lyman Page.[9] He completed his thesis in 1995 on the measurement of the degree-scale anisotropy of the CMB with the ground-based experiment Saskatoon.[9][10] He then became a Millikan Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology until 1999, when he was granted a faculty position at the University of Toronto.[1]

Current Research

Professor Netterfield is the head of the Balloon Astrophysics or "BALLAST" research group at the University of Toronto.[1] Along with his students, and in collaboration with research groups from other institutions worldwide, he is currently working on the design, assembly, and testing of three balloon-borne telescopes. The first, BLAST-Pol, is the BLAST telescope with added sensitivity to polarization, which enables it to observe magnetic fields in star formation regions.[11] BLAST-Pol flew from Antarctica in December 2010 and is scheduled to do so again in December 2012.[12] He is also working on Spider, a balloon-borne CMB polarization experiment that is designed to detect the imprint on the CMB of primordial gravitational waves that are predicted to have been produced by inflation in the very early universe.[13] His third active project, the Balloon-borne Imaging Testbed, or BIT, is a prototype instrument that will serve as a precursor to a more ambitious balloon-borne optical wide-field imaging telescope.

Other Interests

Netterfield is an avid aviation enthusiast and computer programmer. He is the original developer of kst, an open-source, real-time data plotting program that he works on while riding the TTC.[1][14]

Awards
  • 2008 NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship[2]
  • 2007 Canadian Association of Physicists Herzberg Medal[3]
  • 2001 Sloan Foundation Fellowship[15]
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References
  1. http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~netterfield/ Barth Netterfield personal home page at U of T
  2. http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Prizes-Prix/Steacie-Steacie/Profiles-Profils_eng.asp?ID=1010 Steacie award profile page at NSERC (for citation a, see paragraph 7)
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-04-19. Retrieved 2012-06-08.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) 2007 CAP Herzberg Medal press release
  4. Glanz, James (27 April 2000). "Clearest Picture of Infant Universe Sees It All and Questions It, Too". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  5. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104460 Paper on the determination of cosmological parameters by BOOMERANG (ApJ 571, 604-614, 2002)
  6. http://blastexperiment.info/names.php Archived 2012-02-09 at the Wayback Machine BLAST experiment list of collaborators
  7. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/fullcredits#cast BLAST! full cast and crew on IMDb
  8. http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/netterfield_barth.asp Archived 2013-10-20 at the Wayback Machine "Dr. Netterfield is Having a BLAST", article at the Canadian Space Agency website (paragraph 3)
  9. http://catalog.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBRecID=935258&v2=1&SEQ=20120608010305&PID=dolscMJPPoyG4n8ulo4iefEL1 Doctoral thesis at Princeton University Library
  10. Netterfield, C. B; Devlin, M. J; Jarosik, N; Page, L; Wollack, E. J (1997). "A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background". The Astrophysical Journal. 474 (1): 47–66. arXiv:astro-ph/9601197. Bibcode:1997ApJ...474...47N. doi:10.1086/303438.
  11. http://blastexperiment.info/sciencepol.php Archived 2014-04-24 at the Wayback Machine BLAST-Pol science webpage
  12. http://blastexperiment.info/flights.php Archived 2012-12-16 at the Wayback Machine BLAST flights webpage
  13. http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/spider/spider_front.htm Spider experiment website at Caltech Observational Cosmology Group
  14. http://kst-plot.kde.org/authors.php List of kst authors
  15. http://www.cifar.ca/barth-netterfield CIFAR profile page
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