John R Thorstensen
Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Dartmouth College
United States of America
Biography
John Thorstensen is an optical observational astronomer. He has been at Dartmouth since 1980. His undergraduate degree was from Haverford College (1974), which was followed by graduate studies in the Berkeley (California) Astronomy Department. He specializes in observations of cataclysmic binary stars and parallax measurements of nearby stars. Since 2007 he has served as the director of the MDM Observatory on Kitt Peak, Arizona; MDM is operated by a consortium of five universities. Thorstensen developed the program JSkyCalc and its antecedents, which are widely used in planning observations.
Research Interest
Observational astronomy, cataclysmic binary stars, X-ray binary stars, parallax determinations, astronomical software, astrometry
Publications
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Thorstensen, J R,, and J N Skinner, 2012, "Spectroscopy and Photometry of Cataclysmic Variable Candidates from the Catalina Real Time Survey, Astronomical Journal, 144, 81
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Skinner, J. N., Thorstensen, J. R., and Lepine, S. 2014, "Cataclysmic Variables in the SUPERBLINK Proper Motion Survey", Astronomical Journal, 148, 115.
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Halpern, J. P., and Thorstensen, J. R. 2015, "Optical Studies of Thirteen Hard X-ray Selected Cataclysmic Binaries", Astronomical Journal, 150, 170.
