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Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
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Curtis S. Cooper, Postdoctoral Researcher

B.A. (Physics) 1999, Cornell University

Ph. D. (Planetary Sciences) 2006, UA/LPL

Contact:

 
Lunar and Planetary Lab
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721		 Office: Space Sciences 318
Phone: (520) 621-1471
Email: curtis@lpl.arizona.edu

This Spring, I completed my Ph. D. dissertation on brown dwarf and extrasolar giant planet meteorologies with Professor Adam P. Showman. For the coming year, I have decided to stay here at the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral research associate. This summer, I am working with Adam Showman. We are continuing our investigations of the atmospheric circulations of extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs (see my publications). We are employing a preexisting dynamical code similar to the core of an Earth GCM (General Circulation Model) in order to predict the flow geometry of various types of objects. The project focuses on heavily irradiated giant planets in the class of 51 Peg b. The circulation pattern and flow velocities will predictably alter the infrared spectrum and optical albedo of the planet. I will be switching in the Fall to work with Professor Alexander A. Pavlov on the atmosphere of the Archean Earth, with a view especially to characterizing the habitability of extrasolar terrestrial planets.

Previously, I worked with Professor Jonathan I. Lunine to develop one-dimensional cloud models for planetary atmospheres.  The model calculates particle sizes for several important cloud-forming species.  It has been used to model the radiative effects of clouds in brown dwarf atmospheres and the upper atmosphere of the transiting extrasolar giant planet, HD 209458b.  In 2005, we released the source code used for this paper for general use by the community.


Current Projects:

*Circulations of extrasolar giant planets (EGPs).
*Atmospheric dynamics of extrasolar terrestrial planets (ETPs).

Current LPL Supervisors:

*Adam P. Showman
*Alex A. Pavlov

Also, check out my list of publications.

For lots of cool, non-astronomy related stuff (like my computer graphics projects, my participation in WCReplays.com, and my online photo album), please visit my personal web page.

N.B. My personal web page will now be hosted by my own computer, Sky, which is a dual-core Athlon 64 running Apache 2 on Debian Linux. I made the switch for unlimited disk space to serve large files, such as my photographs, audio and graphics files, projects, etc. I am also beginning to store the originals of my Canon A80 digital photographs here (in addition to the WWW albums). Research-related content, including my publications list, will remain here on LPL's main Web server.

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