Dr. Dana Backman

Astronomer Dana Backman’s research interests include formation of planetary systems, nearby stars with planetary debris disks, and the evolution of our solar system, especially the Kuiper Belt. He is currently working on combining Spitzer infrared space telescope data with ground-based sub-millimeter observations of the nearby solar-type star epsilon Eridani. These observations indicate that eps Eri is remarkably similar to the way our solar system was at the tender age of 0.7 billion years, with a hefty outer Kuiper Belt and inner asteroid belt plus a possible Jupiter-mass planet in a Jupiter-like orbit. Epsilon Eridani, of course, was one of the two stars in Frank Drake’s pioneering SETI search more than 40 years ago.

Dana’s day job is managing the education and public outreach office for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, a 100-inch telescope mounted in a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that made its first test flight in April. Eventually, the flagship education program for SOFIA will involve training classroom teachers and other educators to fly onboard the aircraft as partners with the astronomer research teams.

Projects

SOFIA Education and Public Outreach

The SOFIA E/PO program has the following responsibilities:

Education: Implementing an education program that makes use of the unique characteristics of a flying observatory to address national needs for improved science, mathematics and technical education.

Public Affairs: Implementing a public affairs program to produce press releases and support press conferences regarding SOFIA milestones and discoveries, as well as to cultivate long-term relations with members of the press and media.

Public Outreach: Implementing a program of public outreach (also called public engagement) to directly inform citizens about the SOFIA program other than via press and media channels.

Science Outreach: Collaborating with the SOFIA scientific staff to promote SOFIA to the scientific community.

The Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Placing Our Solar System in Context

We plan to trace the evolution of planetary systems at ages ranging from: (1) 3-10 Myr when stellar accretion from the disk terminates; to (2) 10-100 Myr when planets achieve their final masses via coalescence of solids and accretion of remnant molecular gas; to (3) 100-1000 Myr when the final architecture of solar systems takes form and frequent collisions between remnant planetesimals produce copious quantities of dust; and finally to (4) mature systems of age comparable to the Sun in which planet-driven activity of planetesimals continues to generate detectable dust. Our strategy is to use carefully calibrated spectral energy distributions and high-resolution spectra to infer the radial distribution of dust and the molecular hydrogen content of disks surrounding a sample of 300 solar-like stars distributed uniformly in log-age over 3 Myr to 3 Gyr.

The high precision and fine sampling of Spitzer spectral energy distributions can reveal both the existence of planets and their approximate masses and radial distributions through modeling of the dynamic effects of planets in sculpting planetesimal distributions and orchestrating their collision frequency. The size of our target list will enable us to characterize the diversity of planetary system architectures, providing a deeper appreciation of the range of possible outcomes of the planet formation process -- thus placing our own solar system in context.