Jacobsen Group

Daniel Green

Associate
Jacobsen Group
Daniel Green is Director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams and he is involved in research of small bodies of the solar system — particularly comets and meteors, but also minor planets.  He collects and archives/publishes data on comets from observers around the world, and these data are published in the International Comet Quarterly (the world’s largest journal devoted solely to comets, which he edits) and posted at the Cometary Science Archive on its computers at EPS.  He also directs the acquisition of CCD images of comets on a nightly basis using telescopes in Tibet, and those images are analyzed, measured, and archived; searching for new comets and near-earth asteroids.  He is a member of the International Astronomical Union’s 13-member Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, which approves names for comets and minor planets (including trans-Neptunian objects) and their satellites.  He is a member of Harvard’s Origins program, with an interest in how observational data of comets can help in the study of their origins and in the origins of the solar system.  Green obtained his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the University of Durham (U.K.), his thesis focusing on analysis of old astronomical data in the historical literature using modern techniques, to extend our archive of useful data by centuries.