  {"id":22645,"date":"2014-02-18T14:46:50","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T00:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=22645"},"modified":"2021-11-05T10:34:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T20:34:54","slug":"astronomer-christoph-baranec-named-sloan-foundation-fellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2014\/02\/18\/astronomer-christoph-baranec-named-sloan-foundation-fellow\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomer Christoph Baranec named Sloan Foundation Fellow"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_22647\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22647\" style=\"width: 162px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/baranec.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"162\" height=\"204\" class=\"size-full wp-image-22647\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22647\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Christoph Baranec<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Assistant Astronomer <strong>Christoph Baranec<\/strong> of the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Âé¶¹´«Ã½<\/span> at M&#257;noa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> has been selected as one of 126 recipients of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sloan.org\/sloan-research-fellowships\/\">2014 Sloan Research Fellowship<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Awarded annually since 1955, the two-year fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as the next generation of scientific leaders.<\/p>\n<p>In nominating Baranec for the award, Institute for Astronomy Director <strong>G&#252;enther Hasinger<\/strong> said, &ldquo;Dr. Baranec is a rising star in the field of astronomical instrumentation. Even at this early stage of his career he has amassed a record of outstanding contributions to the field of <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ifa.hawaii.edu\/newsletters\/article.cfm?a=300&amp;n=26\">adaptive optics<\/a>, which removes the blurring effects of the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere for ground-based astronomical telescopes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Baranec&#8217;s most significant work has been the development of a replicable, cost effective, and fully automated adaptive optics system called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/Robo-AO\/\">Robo-AO<\/a>, which enables modest-size (1- to 3-meter) telescopes to image objects 10 times more sharply than without the system. Installed on the Palomar 1.5-meter telescope in California, it enabled Baranec and his colleagues to confirm numerous exoplanet candidates found by NASA&#8217;s Kepler Space Telescope. He plans to implement such a system on the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea.<\/p>\n<p>After majoring in astronomy at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caltech.edu\/\">California Institute of Technology<\/a>, Baranec studied optical sciences at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arizona.edu\/\">University of Arizona<\/a> and received a PhD in 2007. He spent six years as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech before joining the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Âé¶¹´«Ã½<\/span> faculty in July 2013. Baranec works at the Institute for Astronomy Hilo office in the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Âé¶¹´«Ã½<\/span> at Hilo University Research Park.<\/p>\n<p>For more, read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/info\/press-releases\/Baranec-Sloan\/\">Institute for Astronomy&#8217;s news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;By Louise Good<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Institute for Astronomy&#8217;s Christoph Baranec has been selected as one of 126 recipients of a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[34,35,949,9],"class_list":["post-22645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-robo-ao","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22645"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151409,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645\/revisions\/151409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}