U.S. Naval Observatory 3450 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, DC, 20392, USA E-mail: pas@cygnus.usno.navy.mil |
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1. Born in: Arad, Romania, 7/20/38
2. Studies:
Case/Western Reserve University (Warner Swasey Obs.)1956-1963, BA 1961, MS 1964
University of Virginia (McCormick Obs.) 1965/66, 1967/68, PhD 1972
3. Left Romania in: March, 1941
4. Some personal data:
Married to Julia F. Stephens, 8/1965
Children: David, Mark, Adam
5. Relatives still living in Romania: Aunts, cousins
6. Most important works:
Codiscovery of Saturn XIV, Calypso, in 1980 (Pascu, Seidelmann, Baum, Currie)
See summary of IAU decisions at Patras, Sky and Telescope, July 1983.
The great bulk of my observations of the satellites Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune made over 30 years with photographic plates,
CCDs, and the Hubble Space Telescope remain unpublished but exist in the
archives at the Jet Propulsion Lab, at Bureau des Longitudes, at the
Russian Space Agency and at several other institutions around the world.
These observations formed the greatest weight in fitting the new
theories of the satellites used for the space probe reconnaissance of
the planets in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Below is a list of some of my more important publications of the past 20 years.
It includes a few reviews.
-Pascu, D.(1977)."Astrometric Techniques for the Observation of Planetary Satellites",
in Planetary Satellites, Joseph Burns, ed. pp. 63-86.
(Univ.of Ariz. Press) (Invited review paper for IAU Coll. # 28, 1974)
-Pascu, D.(1978). "A History of the Discovery and Positional Observation of the Martian Satellites;
1877-1977", Vistas in Astronomy 22, 141
-Pascu, D. (1980). "A possible new satellite of Saturn, 1980 S1", IAU Circ. #3454.
-Pascu, D. and Seidelmann, P.K. (1980). "Observations of new Saturnian satellites 1980 S1, 1980 S3,
1980 S6 and 1980 S25," IAU Circ. #3496.
-Pascu, D., Seidelmann, P.K., Schmidt, R.E., Santoro, E.J.,and Hershey, J.L.(1987).
"Astrometric CCD Observations of Miranda", Astronom. J. 93, 963.
-Pascu, D. and Schmidt, R.E. (1990). "Photographic Positional Observations of Saturn", Astron. J., 99, 1974.
-Pascu, D, Panossian, S.P., Schmidt, R.E., Seidelmann, P.K., and Hershey, J.L. (1992).
"B, V Photometry of Thebe (JXIV)", Icarus, 98, 38-42.
-Pascu, D. (1994). "An appraisal of the USNO program for photographic astrometry of bright planetary satellites",
in Galactic and Solar System Optical Astrometry, eds L.V. Morrison and G.F. Gilmore Cambridge University Press, Cambridge).
-Pascu, D.(1996)."Long-Focus CCD Astrometry of Planetary Satellites" in
Dynamics, Ephemerides and Astrometry of the Solar System,
S. Ferraz-Mello, B. Morando and J.-E. Arlot, eds. pp. 373-388. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht)
(Invited review paper for IAU Symp. #172, Paris, 1995)
-Pascu, D., Rohde, J.R., Seidelmann, P.K., Wells, E., Kowal, C., Zellner,
B., Storrs, A., Currie, D.G., and Dowling, D.M. (1997)."Astrometry of
Faint Planetary Satellites with WFPC2 of Hubble Space Telescope," in
Dynamics and Astrometry of Natural and Artificial Celestial Bodies.
Proceedings of IAU Coll. 165, eds. I.M. Wytrzyszczak, J.H. Lieske and R.A. Feldman, p. 517.
-Pascu, D., Rohde, J.R., Seidelmann, P.K., Wells, E., Kowal, C., Zellner, B., Storrs, A., Currie, D.G.,
and Dowling, D.M. (1998)."HST Astrometric Observations and Orbital Mean Motion Corrections for the Inner Uranian
Satellites," Astron. J. 115, 1190.
I am now completing an astrometric, photometric and dynamical analysis
of Hubble Space Telescope of the inner satellites of Neptune.
7. Scientific membership:
International Astronomical Union (comm. 16, 20 and 24, and Working Group
on Standard Stars);
American Astronomical Society (Division on Dynamical Astronomy, Division
of Planetary Sciences).