Welcome
My name is Dan Reichart and I am a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am the Director of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network, of Skynet’s PROMPT telescopes in Chile, Australia, and Canada, and of Morehead Observatory in Chapel Hill. My research includes developing systems to make both optical and radio telescopes widely accessible; developing new statistical techniques, for fitting models to data and for rejecting outlying/contaminated data; and time-domain astronomy, including gamma-ray bursts and gravitational-wave events. I also have broad interests in astronomy education.
Recent News
July 2019: Funded by North Carolina Space Grant’s Minority Serving Institution Collaborative Research Program: Our Place In Space! A Collaborative Research and Research Training Partnership in Astronomy between Winston-Salem State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ($20K)
June 2019: Presented Two Ways to Make a Black Hole — and See It! at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina
June 2019: Undergraduate student Roark Habegger awarded Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research ($5K)
May — June 2019: Presenting The Big Bang: Cosmology and the Early Universe to the Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina
May 2019: Undergraduate student Nick Konz awarded Department of Physics and Astronomy Robert N. Shelton Award for Excellence in Research ($500)
May 2019: Undergraduate student Nick Konz awarded North Carolina Space Grant’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship ($7K)
May 2019: Proposal to modernize and renovate Morehead Observatory funded by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ($51K)
April 2019: Presented Observing with Skynet: From Birthing Black Holes to Globally Distributed Robots to the Green Hope High School Astronomy Club in Cary, North Carolina
April 2019: Funded by the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation: A Cost-Effective Quadrupling of Skynet/PROMPT/DLT40’s Search and Discovery Footprint for the Optical Counterparts of Gravitational-Wave Events ($96K)
March 2019: Presented Two Ways to Make a Black Hole — and See It! for Astronomy on Tap at Fullsteam Brewery in Durham, North Carolina
February 2019: Daily Tar Heel: Court rules on former UNC student charged in the Davie Poplar bombing attempt
February 2019: Released statement regarding Joshua Edwards being found not guilty for his actions at the Davie Poplar tree
February 2019: CHART32’s PROMPT image selected as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day: Twin Galaxies in Virgo
January 2019: Published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series: Skynet Algorithm for Single-Dish Radio Mapping I: Contaminant-Cleaning, Mapping, and Photometering Small-Scale Structures, Martin, J. R., Reichart, D. E., Dutton, D. A., Maples, M. P., Berger, T. A., Ghigo, F. D., Haislip, J. B., Shaban, O. H., Trotter, A. S., Barnes, L. M., Paggen, M. L., Gao, R. L., Salemi, C. P., Langston, G. I., Bussa, S., Duncan, J. A., White, S., Heatherly, S. A., Karlik, J. B., Johnson, E. M., Reichart, J. E., Foster, A. C., Kouprianov, V. V., Mazlin, S., and Harvey, J., 2019, ApJS, 240, A12, 1-50 [ApJS] [arXiv]
January 2019: Hosted total lunar eclipse viewing event at Morehead Observatory in partnership with Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
October 2018: Published in Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education (RTSRE) Proceedings: Mapping the Milky Way: A Radio Astronomy-Directed Investigation for Lecture-Based Astro 101 Courses, Williamson, K., Reichart, D., Wallace, C., Prather, E. E., and Hornstein, S. 2018, Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education, Proceedings of the Conference Held 18-21 June 2017 in San Diego, eds. M. Fitzgerald, C. R. James, S. Buxner, and S. White, 1, 283-290 [RTSRE}
September 2018: Presented Our Place In Space! A Skynet-Based Introductory Astronomy Curriculum for College and Advanced High-School Students at the North Carolina Astronomers Meeting (NCAM) at Guilford Technical Community College in Guilford, North Carolina
August 2018: Published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series: Robust Chauvenet Outlier Rejection, Maples, M. P., Reichart, D. E., Konz, N. C., Berger, T. A., Trotter, A. S., Martin, J. R., Dutton, D. A., Paggen, M. L., Joyner, R. E., and Salemi, C. P. 2018, ApJS, 238, A2, 1 - 49 [ApJS] [arXiv]
August 2018: Held the 27th-annual Educational Research in Radio Astronomy (ERIRA) program at Green Bank Observatory