Marc Kuchner

Marc Kuchner
Born (1972-08-07) August 7, 1972 (age 52)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
NationalityAmerican
EducationHarvard University, California Institute of Technology
Known forDetection of exoplanetary systems, Theory of formation of circumstellar disks and planets, citizen science and science communication.
Scientific career
FieldsPlanetary astronomy
Websiteeud.gsfc.nasa.gov/Marc.Kuchner/home.html

Marc Kuchner (born August 7, 1972) is an American astrophysicist, and the Citizen Science Officer at NASA Headquarters. He is known for his work on citizen science, and imaging of disks and exoplanets. Together with Wesley Traub, he invented the band-limited coronagraph,[1] used on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), originally designed for the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) telescope. He is also known for his novel supercomputer models of planet-disk interactions[2] and for developing the ideas of ocean planets,[3] carbon planets, and helium planets.[4] Kuchner appears as an expert commentator in the National Geographic television show "Alien Earths" and frequently answers the "Ask Astro" questions in Astronomy Magazine. Kuchner helped found several citizen science projects, including Disk Detective and Backyard Worlds.

  1. ^ Kuchner, M. & Traub, W.A. (2002). "A Coronagraph with a Band-limited Mask for Finding Terrestrial Planets". "The Astrophysical Journal" 570, 900-908. (Abstract)
  2. ^ Smith, Catharine (28 September 2010). "NASA Dust Model Presents Alien's View Of Our Solar System". Huffington Post.
  3. ^ Kuchner, M. (2003). "Volatile-rich Earth-Mass Planets in the Habitable Zone". "The Astrophysical Journal" 596, L105-L108. (Abstract)
  4. ^ Seager, S.; M. Kuchner, C. Hier-Majumder, B. Militzer (2007). "Mass-Radius Relationships for Solid Exoplanets". ApJ 669: 1279