David Henry Lesser's Homepage

	David Henry Lesser's Webpage Ph.D. Student in astrophysics, Steward Observatory. Our mailing address is 933 N Cherry Ave. Tucson AZ 85721 email: dlesser@as.arizona.edu.
	Images clockwise from top right: A photo of myself; Roger Angel's prototype solar tracker; STO, in full flight configuration, at the hang test in Palestine, TX, August 2011. A photo of me at the South Pole, taking a break from working on HEAT.

I work primarily on instrumentation, mostly for Chris Walker and his submillimeter/THz instrumentation group. Our current projects include:

SuperCAM, a 345 GHz spectrometer with 64 pixels, an order of magnitude higher than any other such device. SuperCAM just received first light at ARO's submillimeter telescope (SMT) in Spring of 2012, and will map much of the northern sky over the next year.
The Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO), a sub-millimeter observatory which recently (winter 2011/2012) flew at an altitude of 100,000 feet above Antarctica. You can see pictures of the launch here.
The High Elevation Antarctic Telescope (HEAT), an unmanned terahertz telescope at Ridge A, a site on the high Antarctic plateau near the south pole. The first iteration is currently operating in the field. We are in the process of building a second similar system. The two observatories will then alternate each year; one in Antarctica taking data, and the other back in the lab being upgraded.

Affiliated projects (projects with which our group or members thereof are associated) include:

ATOMMS, an atmospheric limb-sounding instrument for measuring trace gases in the earth's atmosphere. A sub-millimeter transmitter/receiver pair are mounted in two aircraft which fly at each other.
HAZEL, a military/defense project for using THz spectroscopy to remotely detect explosives before they become a threat.

Future projects we hope to work on include GUSSTO, a balloon mission intended to supercede STO for which we have received first-stage (exploratory) funding.

I also work for Roger Angel, helping build prototype concentrated solar collectors for clean energy.

Lastly, I'm a board member at Xerocraft, a 'Makerspace' in Tucson (and a 501(c)3 non-profit) that provides tools, resources, and training to kids, hobbyists, and members of the public who want to learn how to make whatever they wish. We run classes in everything from welding to weaving, computer programming to fine woodworking.

David Henry Lesser's Webpage