Barth Netterfield
{{Short description|Canadian astrophysicist}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Barth Netterfield
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| citizenship = Canadian
American
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| fields = Astrophysics
| workplaces = University of Toronto
| alma_mater = Princeton University
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| doctoral_advisor = Lyman Page
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| doctoral_students = Juan Diego Soler
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| known_for = Balloon-borne telescopes, observational cosmology
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| website = {{URL | http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~netterfield}}
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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.http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~netterfield/ Barth Netterfield personal home page at U of T He is a leading expert in the development of balloon-borne telescopes.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){{cite web|url=http://www.cap.ca/awards/press/2007-Netterfield.html |title=Press Releases |accessdate=2012-06-08 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140419015305/http://www.cap.ca/awards/press/2007-Netterfield.html |archivedate=2014-04-19 }} 2007 CAP Herzberg Medal press release 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. 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.
{{cite news
|last=Glanz |first=James
|date=27 April 2000
|title=Clearest Picture of Infant Universe Sees It All and Questions It, Too
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/us/clearest-picture-of-infant-universe-sees-it-all-and-questions-it-too.html?pagewanted=1
|work=The New York Times
|accessdate=2012-06-08
}}{{Cite journal|arxiv = astro-ph/0104460|doi = 10.1086/340118|title = A Measurement by BOOMERANG of Multiple Peaks in the Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background|year = 2002|last1 = Netterfield|first1 = C. B.|last2 = Ade|first2 = P. A. R.|last3 = Bock|first3 = J. J.|last4 = Bond|first4 = J. R.|last5 = Borrill|first5 = J.|last6 = Boscaleri|first6 = A.|last7 = Coble|first7 = K.|last8 = Contaldi|first8 = C. R.|last9 = Crill|first9 = B. P.|last10 = De Bernardis|first10 = P.|last11 = Farese|first11 = P.|last12 = Ganga|first12 = K.|last13 = Giacometti|first13 = M.|last14 = Hivon|first14 = E.|last15 = Hristov|first15 = V. V.|last16 = Iacoangeli|first16 = A.|last17 = Jaffe|first17 = A. H.|last18 = Jones|first18 = W. C.|last19 = Lange|first19 = A. E.|last20 = Martinis|first20 = L.|last21 = Masi|first21 = S.|last22 = Mason|first22 = P.|last23 = Mauskopf|first23 = P. D.|last24 = Melchiorri|first24 = A.|last25 = Montroy|first25 = T.|last26 = Pascale|first26 = E.|last27 = Piacentini|first27 = F.|last28 = Pogosyan|first28 = D.|last29 = Pongetti|first29 = F.|last30 = Prunet|first30 = S.|journal = The Astrophysical Journal|volume = 571|issue = 2|pages = 604–614|bibcode = 2002ApJ...571..604N|s2cid = 17110147|display-authors = 29}} More recently, he has delved into the field of submillimetre astronomy and the physics of star formation, through his involvement with the BLAST telescope.http://blastexperiment.info/names.php {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120209131939/http://blastexperiment.info/names.php |date=2012-02-09 }} BLAST experiment list of collaborators Netterfield was featured prominently in BLAST!, a documentary film about the 2005 and 2006 flights of BLAST from Sweden and Antarctica.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/fullcredits#cast BLAST! full cast and crew on IMDb {{User-generated source|certain=yes|date= March 2022}}
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.http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/netterfield_barth.asp {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020093043/http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/netterfield_barth.asp |date=2013-10-20 }} "Dr. Netterfield is Having a BLAST", article at the Canadian Space Agency website (paragraph 3) His interest in physics was also fostered by his Grade 10 mathematics teacher, who encouraged him to read about relativity. Netterfield graduated high school from 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.http://catalog.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBRecID=935258&v2=1&SEQ=20120608010305&PID=dolscMJPPoyG4n8ulo4iefEL1 Doctoral thesis at Princeton University Library He completed his thesis in 1995 on the measurement of the degree-scale anisotropy of the CMB with the ground-based experiment Saskatoon.{{cite journal | bibcode = 1997ApJ...474...47N | title=A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background | journal=The Astrophysical Journal | volume=474 | issue=1 | pages=47–66 | year=1997 | doi=10.1086/303438|arxiv = astro-ph/9601197 | last1=Netterfield | first1=C. B | last2=Devlin | first2=M. J | last3=Jarosik | first3=N | last4=Page | first4=L | last5=Wollack | first5=E. J | s2cid=14652002 }} 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.
Current Research
Professor Netterfield is the head of the Balloon Astrophysics or "BALLAST" research group at the University of Toronto. 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.http://blastexperiment.info/sciencepol.php {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140424091311/http://blastexperiment.info/sciencepol.php |date=2014-04-24 }} BLAST-Pol science webpage BLAST-Pol flew from Antarctica in December 2010 and is scheduled to do so again in December 2012.http://blastexperiment.info/flights.php {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121216044645/http://www.blastexperiment.info/flights.php |date=2012-12-16 }} BLAST flights webpage 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.http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/spider/spider_front.htm Spider experiment website at Caltech Observational Cosmology Group His third active project, the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT),{{Cite journal|last1=Romualdez|first1=L. Javier|last2=Benton|first2=Steven J.|last3=Brown|first3=Anthony M.|last4=Clark|first4=Paul|last5=Damaren|first5=Christopher J.|last6=Eifler|first6=Tim|last7=Fraisse|first7=Aurelien A.|last8=Galloway|first8=Mathew N.|last9=Gill|first9=Ajay|last10=Hartley|first10=John W.|last11=Holder|first11=Bradley|date=2020-03-01|title=Robust diffraction-limited NIR-to-NUV wide-field imaging from stratospheric balloon-borne platforms -- SuperBIT science telescope commissioning flight & performance|journal=Review of Scientific Instruments|volume=91|issue=3|pages=034501|doi=10.1063/1.5139711 |pmid=32259997 | arxiv=1911.11210|issn=0034-6748|hdl=10852/82931|s2cid=215409662 |hdl-access=free}} is a wide-field, diffraction-limited, near-infrared to near-ultraviolet telescope capable of imaging resolution and quality at a level that rivals the Hubble Space Telescope. As one of the first astronomical imagers of its kind intended for the stratosphere, SuperBIT serves a prototype instrument for a more ambitious balloon-borne optical wide-field imaging telescope (under the project name GigaBIT).
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.http://kst-plot.kde.org/authors.php List of kst authors
Awards
- 2008 NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship
- 2007 Canadian Association of Physicists Herzberg Medal
- 2001 Sloan Foundation Fellowshiphttp://www.cifar.ca/barth-netterfield CIFAR profile page
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~netterfield/ Personal Home Page]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120420050040/http://www.ideacityonline.com/talks/barth-netterfield-on-exploring-the-universe/ Ideacity Talk]
- {{IMDb name|2985082}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20110603211103/http://blastexperiment.info/ BLAST Experiment Page]
- [http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~lgg/spider/spider_front.htm Spider Experiment Page at Caltech]
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Category:21st-century Canadian astronomers
Category:Canadian astrophysicists
Category:Academic staff of the University of Toronto
Category:Bethel University (Minnesota) alumni