ATLAS Co-PI and senior software engineer Larry Denneau was the chief software architect of the Pan-STARRS moving object processing system (MOPS) and adapted it to ATLAS. MOPS is a software package that automatically identifies solar system objects (in particular hazardous asteroids) in the ATLAS and Pan-STARRS data streams.
Larry has been poking at computer keyboards since the early 80s and received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Arizona, whereupon he quickly escaped academia. His software career has spanned projects ranging from surface metrology for the semiconductor industry, medical scheduling, geophysical instrumentation, and a dot-com Internet startup that actually turned a profit. Now back in academia, Larry received a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Queen's University Belfast and has enthusiastically joined the effort to protect the earth from dangerous asteroids.
As soon as the first images captured by the James Webb telescope were published in July 2022, we started to produce a report where the sky describers entered the scene. Astronomers, astrophysicists, instrument specialists, data analysts, all have exposed their contribution to the exploration of the sky, their fascination in front of the immensity of the cosmos and the questions that remain unanswered. This video is part of a series made in Hawaii and on the West Coast of the United States.