Welcome to Greg Taylor's Home Page

= On August 15, 2005 I joined the faculty at UNM, where we are building up a radio group and the Long Wavelength Array. I retain an adjunct position on the scientific support staff at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, and on the Dept. of Physics faculty at New Mexico Tech. In 2004/2005 I was on sabbatical at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC). For more details, here is my vita.

What's going on in PandA (Physics and Astronomy) at UNM:

We have a regular Astrophysics talk series. The normal meeting time is Mondays at 11am, followed by lunch with the speaker. Please volunteer yourself or others by email to .

We are actively building up the radio astronomy group within PandA. At present we have 2 postdocs: Gianfranco Gentile, and Masaya Kuniyoshi. PandA professors Ylva Pihlstrom, Rich Rand, Trish Henning, Sudakar Prasad, Tim Thomas and Greg Taylor are all contributing to the Long Wavelength Array effort. Adjunct faculty John Dickel and Lanie Dickel also have interests in radio astronomy sources and techniques. Students interesting in radio astronomy are encouraged to contact one of us.

My Courses:

Physics 102: Introduction to Physics, Fall 2008
Astro 101: Introduction to Astronomy, Spring 2008 Fall 2007
Astro 423: Radio Astronomy Spring 2006, 2005

The Long Wavelength Array (LWA)

The LWA will explore the universe at frequencies in the range 20-80 MHz with arcsecond level resolution and mJy level sensitivity. Consisting of ~50 stations spread across New Mexico, the LWA will make crucial measurements of supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts, active galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. The first station, the Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array, is currently under construction and will be located near the VLA. The LWA is a project of the SouthWest Consortium consisting of the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas at Austin, the Naval Research Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory and with assistance from NRAO and individual researchers across the US. First 8 LWDA antennas installed on March 4, 2006.

Radio Surveys: Science and Techniques

On April 18, 2007 we held a meeting on Radio Surveys at Los Alamos. This meeting was sponsored by the New Mexico IAS, and included astronomers from NRAO, NMSU, NMT, LANL and UNM. Here is the program and the talks from the meeting.

Current Research Interests, Talks and Travel

Here is my travel and talks schedule for this year.

Here is a Movie of the CSO 1946+708 that we have been studying for some 16 years now. This movie shows the 8 GHz monitoring over the last 12 years. A paper describing the results is in the works. We have completed a VLBI survey called the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS). The paper describing the survey and copious amounts of data for 1127 sources can be found on the VIPS web page.

GLAST has launched successfully and is performing beautifully. We anticipate that many of our favorite blazars imaged in VIPS and elsewhere will be detected by GLAST. We have put together a web page describing Radio Observations of Active Galaxies planned during the GLAST mission.

I've been chasing after the radio afterglows from Gamma-Ray Bursts, especially GRB 030329, with both the VLA and VLBA.

We have now finished a couple large VLBI surveys of Active Galactic Nuclei. Here is a link to those 300+ maps in the PR and CJ surveys and the visibility data. My summer 2002 student, Lindsey Pollack, has analyzed polarimetry from 182 sources in CJF. I continue to do a lot of followup observations with the VLA, OVRO mma, Palomar, Keck, and VLBA telescopes.

I'm also continuing to study radio galaxy environments, mostly through the use of Faraday rotation measure observations with the VLA and VLBA. Surprisingly large RMs are found in typical quasars. These results are reported in Evidence for ordered magnetic fields in the quasar environment, Magnetic Fields in Quasar Cores and Magnetic Fields in Quasar Cores II. My former Ph.D. student Bob Zavala has recently completed the study of a larger sample of Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and BL Lacs.

Together with my former Ph.D. student Alison Peck we are using HI and free-free absorption measurements to explore the circumnuclear environment around AGN in general and CSOs in particular. See Alison's web page for more details.

Along with Martin Shepherd and Tim Pearson we have developed automatic mapping for Difmap. We're using the latest FITS version of Difmap and you should be too. Here is the link to the latest release. I recommend mapplot for making images and overlays.

I could go on and on but you might be getting sleepy. Take a look at my publications if you want to know more about what I've been doing. Just realized that you got the wrong person? Check out the Greg Taylors Clearinghouse for different people with the same name.

Astronomers are moving to Mac OS X.

If you have recently made the switch then check out my page on Mac OSX Tips and Tricks for Scientists

Browse through the Picture Gallery

Nifty places on the net:


Last Modified on 2008 August 7

Greg Taylor Phone: (505) 277-5238; FAX: (505) 277-xxxx