What do you do here at Wright Lab?
At Wright Lab, I can usually be found in my office talking on the phone or staring at my laptop.
A while ago I got roped into going on a bird watching expedition when I made a not-so-intelligent remark like, “You’ve seen one bird, you have seen them all.” The woman guiding the tour got right back at me saying, “Charlie, you have seen one star, you have seen them all.” But she was wrong, stars come in the most wonderful variety. I especially like supernovas and RRLyrae variables. They tell us about the nature of our Universe, its age, contents like Dark Energy, its future, etc. Enough to keep our small research group busy for years. To carry out our research, we use both ground-based telescopes in the Andes in Chile in South America, and a space mission, formerly WFIRST, now the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
I especially enjoy working with Yale undergraduates. On the whole they are extremely smart.
What is something that people might not know about you that you’d like to share with the community?
In addition to stars, I enjoy sailboat racing and skiing. Our house is in Guilford on Long Island Sound, where we keep our boat, and we have a place at Killington in Vermont where we like to go on weekends during ski season. That’s a picture of me at the tiller of Hyperon with the red cap (see below).
Where do you like to work remotely? As we all realize, this has been an unusual year for all of us. It is fortunate that with my laptop, a telephone, and a fast printer I could do much of what I do at the lab from my desk at home.
