Dr. Charles Meegan

Principal Research Scientist VI, CSPAR

Contact

320 Sparkman Drive
Cramer Research Hall
Room 2048
Huntsville, AL 35899
Campus Map

256.961.7694
cam0037@uah.edu

Biography

Dr. Charles Meegan received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1973. He then held a post-doctoral position at Rice University, performing observations of celestial gamma-ray sources. In 1976 he came to Huntsville as a NAS/NRC Research Associate. He became a NASA employee in 1978. While at NASA, he was a co-investigator on the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE). BATSE enabled pioneering observations of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), and was instrumental in confirming that these events originated in distant galaxies. Dr. Meegan earned a MSFC Director's Commendation for development of the BATSE Flight Software, as well as a NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement for measurements of the spatial distribution of gamma-ray bursts. In 1993, he and Dr. Gerald Fishman shared the Sigma Xi Huntsville Researcher of the Year Award for their research on gamma-ray bursts.

From 1991 to 1996 Dr. Meegan was the Mission Scientist for Astro-2, a space shuttle experiment that studied ultraviolet radiation. He received a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his technical and leadership contributions to that mission. From 1982 to 1984 he was an Assistant Project Scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Meegan was the Principal Investigator for the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on the Fermi Observatory, which was launched in 2008. He received a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his leadership of that project.


Education

  • Ph.D., University of Maryland, 1973
  • B.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1966

Recent Publications

  • Abbott, et al., "Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger", APJL., 848, 12, 2017.

  • Connaughton, et al., "Fermi GBM Observations of LIGO Gravitational-wave Event GW150914", ApJL., 826, 6, 2016.

  • Bhat, P.N. et al., "The Third Fermi GBM Gamma-ray Burst Catalog: the first six years," ApJS., 223, 28, 2016.

  • Meegan, C. et al., "The Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor," ApJ, 702, 791, 2009.

  • Paciesas, W. et al., "The Fourth BATSE Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog (Revised)," ApJS, 122, 465, 1999.

  • Fishman, G., and Meegan, C., "Gamma-ray bursts," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 33, 415, 1995.

  • Kouveliotou, C. et al., "Identification of two classes of gamma-ray bursts," ApJL, 413, L101, 1993.

  • Meegan, C. et al., "Spatial distribution of gamma-ray bursts observed by BATSE," Nature, 355, 143, 1992.