Philip Kaaret's Web Page

Contact Information
Prof. Philip Kaaret
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242 USA

Phone: 1-319-335-1985
Fax: 1-319-335-1753
Office: 702 Van Allen Hall
Lab: 626 Van Allen Hall
E-mail: philip-kaaret [at] uiowa.edu
Web: http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/~kaaret


Teaching
Fall 2007 - X-rays and detectors lecture
Spring 2007 - General Astronomy
Fall 2006 - High Energy Astrophysics
Spring 2006 - General Astronomy
Spring 2005 - Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe
Fall 2004 - Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe

Research
Kaaret's main interest is understanding the intense gravitational fields surrounding black holes and neutron stars and the dynamics of the accretion of matter onto these objects. He conducts observations at X-ray, optical, and radio wavelengths of objects in our Milky Way galaxy and in relatively nearby galaxies. His current work concerns the highly luminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies which have been interpreted as being intermediate-mass or "medium-sized" black holes, jet ejection from black holes, and rapid variations in the X-ray emission from black holes and neutron stars.

Press coverage
Giant star orbiting black hole on USA Today
Medium-Sized Black Hole on CNN
Black Hole Jets on CNN

Links
Imagine the Universe
Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer
Stellar X-Ray Polarimeter

X-ray data
X-ray line energies
Photon Cross Sections (XCOM)

Vita
Philip Kaaret is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. He received a B.S. in Physics in 1984 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University in 1989. Kaaret was on the faculty of the Physics Department at Columbia University in New York City from 1990 to 1998. He was an Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1998 to 2004.

Bibliography
Kaaret's publications in Scientific Journals