(The galaxy NGC 4449 and its companion dwarf galaxy, NGC 4449B, in a false color image created by Francis Longstaff. Image by Francis Longstaff, via UCLA Newsroom.)
Francis Longstaff is UCLA Anderson's Allstate Professor of Insurance and Finance. HIs publications cover a vast array of finance topics. He's both a certified public accountant (CPA) and a chartered financial analyst (CFA).
He's also an amateur astronomer -- with his own observatory -- who helped discover a dwarf galaxy.
UCLA Newsroom has the details on the latter discovery.
A team led by UCLA research astronomer Michael Rich has used a unique telescope to discover a previously unknown companion to the nearby galaxy NGC 4449, which is some 12.5 million light years from Earth. The newly discovered dwarf galaxy had escaped even the prying eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The research is published Feb. 9 in the journal Nature.
The larger, host galaxy, NGC 4449, may be "something of a living fossil," representing what most galaxies probably looked like shortly after the Big Bang, Rich said. The galaxy is forming stars "so furiously" that it has giant clusters of young stars and even appears bluish — a sign of a young galaxy — to the eye in large amateur telescopes, he said.
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Rich collaborated with Francis Longstaff, a professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an amateur astronomer, in acquiring and using a specialized telescope designed to take images of wide fields of the sky. Known as the Centurion 28 (the diameter of the mirror is 28 inches), the telescope, and the observatory the astronomers used, are located at the Polaris Observatory Association near Frazier Park, in Kern County, Calif.
As a college student, Francis Longstaff was faced with a decision – go to business school or pursue a degree in astronomy.
He loved finance and found it important. Astronomy, meanwhile, had been his hobby since he bought his first telescope as a teenager. In the end, Longstaff chose to go to business school.
But after years of working in brightly lit cities like New York and Los Angeles where stargazing is next to impossible, he started looking for a better way to pursue his other interest.
That was when he decided to build his own observatory.
Dunne goes on to describe how the Longstaff family poured concrete and dug trenches during the construction phase, then learned to operate the telescope. Longstaff's astonomical interests are part of a trend that has seen in increase in discoveries made by amateurs.
Longstaff’s pursuit of astronomy fits into this larger trend of amateur astronomers making contributions to the field. Recently, Longstaff collaborated with Rich in the discovery of a dwarf galaxy.
Longstaff uses the observatory to produce vivid photographs of objects in the night sky, capturing stunning images of spiraling galaxies and cloud-like nebulae.
The brightly-colored photographs produced by the telescope look much different than what one would see peering through a telescope with the naked eye, Longstaff said. While the eye only collects light for a fraction of a second, a telescope can collect light for hours and can bring out fainter objects, he said.
Longstaff enhances the photos on his computer, bringing out the fine details and brilliant colors present in the final images that he posts online to share with his friends.
Daily Bruin piece on Professor Longstaff is found here.
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