Joe Durbak
Department of Physics, University of Maryland
Studies of Transient Astronomical Events with the Lowell Discovery Telescope
Since the discovery of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) the necessity of new tools to observe events across the electromagnetic spectrum has become increasingly apparent. The discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) precipitating multi-messenger astronomy has made this even more true today. With the versatility of the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT), our collaboration between UMD, NASA GSFC and Lowell Observatory has been able to both quickly respond to and use these transient events to explore the universe in greater detail. Our research group is also working to develop novel instruments to aid our observations in the near infrared, and is improving software to analyze data in both the optical and infrared.