Skip to content
Menu
Kevin Krisciunas Headshot
TAMU College Station
Faculty: Instructional Associate Professor Emeritus

Kevin Krisciunas

Biography

Kevin Krisciunas is an observational astronomer who principally works on optical and infrared photometry of supernovae. Towards the end of its existence (2001), Krisciunas was a member of the High-Z Supernova Team. Two members of that team (Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess) shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. All three were then participants in the ESSENCE project (2002-2016), which discovered 213 exploding white dwarf supernovae and produced light curves of them using the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory 4-m telescope. The subsequent refinement of the value of the cosmic equation of state parameter contributes to the conclusion that the Dark Energy density is equivalent to Einstein's cosmological constant. Recently, Krisciunas has also worked on the Carnegie Supernova Project, astronomical site evaluation (atmospheric extinction and sky brightness), the distances and metallicities of open star clusters, spectrophotometry of bright stars, astronomy education, and the history of astronomy. In 2021 and 2022 he serves as the Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society.

Selected Publications

Kevin Krisciunas. “Demonstrating the elliptical orbit of Mars using naked eye data.” American Journal of Physics, 87(11), 885--893, Nov 2019.

Kevin Krisciunas and Belen Bistue. “Notes on the transmission of Ptolemy's Almagest and some geometrical mechanism to the era of Copernicus.” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 22, 492--502, Dec 2019.

Carlos Contreras, et al. “SN 2012fr: Ultraviolet, Optical, and Near-infrared Light Curves of a Type Ia Supernova Observed within a Day of Explosion.” The Astrophysical Journal, 859(1), 24, May 2018.

Christopher R. Burns, et al. “The Carnegie Supernova Project: Absolute Calibration and the Hubble Constant.” The Astrophysical Journal, 869(1), 56, Dec 2018.

Kevin Krisciunas, et al. “The Carnegie Supernova Project. I. Third Photometry Data Release of Low-redshift Type Ia Supernovae and Other White Dwarf Explosions.” The Astronomical Journal, 154(5), 211, Nov 2017.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved, Texas A&M University Trademark | Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843