Tyler McCracken

Tyler McCracken earned his Ph.D.from New Mexico Tech where he worked fringe-tracking for the interferometer at Magedelena Ridge Observatory. He is now a postdoc in Dr. Debra Fischer's exoplanet group at Yale, developing a wavelength calibration technique based on a Fabry-Perot cavity locked to a stabilized laser. This approach offers advantages over other methods: it produces a broadband, comb-like output from 400 - 700 nm that is difficult to achieve with a laser frequency comb; by injecting into the science fibers before and after observations, weak stellar signals are not obliterated; and by locking the laser to an atomic transition, the spectrum is repeatable to 1 part in 10e-11.

Photo and biographical information courtesy of Yale Astronomy.