Donald Figer

False-color image of the Pistol Star and Pistol Nebula. (HST NICMOS)

Star Clusters near the center of the Galaxy (HST NICMOS)

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Figer observed approximately one thousand stars in a young star cluster, the Arches Cluster, which is near the Galactic center. By measuring the initial mass function, he identified an upper limit of 150 solar masses to the masses of stars. [5] His teams performed the first census of massive stars in both the Quintuplet Cluster and the Arches Cluster, finding that massive star clusters form in the present-day Galaxy, as opposed to the previous paradigm that suggested such clusters only formed at the time that the Galaxy formed. [6][7] Figer led a team to identify the Pistol star as one of the most massive stars known in the Galaxy using data that the team obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope.[8]To a local newspaper, Figer remarked that the Pistol star is one of the few stars that appear in a state where stars bubble out much of their material and eject it. He said, “It’s a nice consistent picture to help us understand why massive stars eject their outer layers. The Pistol Star may be that rare stage between being normal and going on to its last death throes.” In the same interview, Figer spoke about coming up with a good name for the star, stating, “‘Just before the press release, we were scratching our heads about what to call the star,’ Figer said, adding that its original name – QF134—wasn’t that sexy.” The star’s name comes from the nebula that surrounds it that looks similar to a pistol. [9]

Figer has developed and used advanced instrumentation for astrophysics his whole career. He led the electronics development for a double-beam IR camera used at Lick Observatory.[10] He and collaborators used this camera to make the first K-band spectral atlas of Wolf-Rayet stars and to search for massive stars near the Galactic center for his PhD thesis (A Search for Emission-line Star Near the Galactic Center).[11][4] Figer was the Principal Optical Designer for the Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph (NIRSpec) for the Keck II Telescope while at UCLA. He and his team used this instrument to take infrared spectra of a massive obscured star cluster located in Antennae Galaxies,[12] estimate the mass of the supermassive black hole located at the Galactic center,[13] and survey the organic volatile species in comet C/1999 H1 (Lee),[14] among many other projects. Figer was one of the detector scientists working on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).[4] He helped in many areas relating to JWST including developing the wavefront sensing deployment procedure and serving as an instrument scientist for JWST NIRCam.[4] He also led the team at the Independent Detector Testing Laboratory (IDTL), jointly operated by Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, to assist NASA in choosing and operating near-infrared detectors on JWST.[4]

Donald F. Figer currently leads the following projects.[4]

• A Single Photon Sensing and Photon Number Resolving Detector for NASA missions (Collaboration with Dartmouth and sponsored by NASA): The objective of this project is to advance optical detector technology to the point where individual photons can be counted and be realized in a very large pixel format (Gigapixel per detector scale) but still maintains performance that is standard with the state-of-the-art devices of today.
• New Infrared Detectors for Astrophysics (Sponsored by National Science Foundation): The object of the overall project is to provide ground-based astronomers a new family of detectors that have very large formats, very low cost, and state-of-the-art performance through advancing technology on depositing HgCdTe on silicon wafers. Phase II is focused on building on the promising devices designed in Phase I and improving them. Key areas of focus are reducing randomly distributed pixels and implement process improvement to keep up with current standards.