Phyllis Lugger Professor of Astronomy Department of Astronomy Indiana University Swain West 319 727 E. Third St. Bloomington, IN  47405 voice: 812-855-6929, 6912, 6911 fax: 812-855-8725 email: lugger@astro.indiana.edu

The collapsed-core cluster M15; click on picture for larger     version.

Education:
A.B. (1976), A.M. (1981)  and Ph.D. (1982) in Astronomy from Harvard University

Teaching: 

• Astronomy 105: Stars and Galaxies 
• Astronomy 102: Gravity, the Great Attractor: the Evolution of Planets, Stars and Galaxies

Research Interests:

I study the dynamics of stellar systems (globular star clusters, interacting binary stars, galactic nuclei and clusters of galaxies). Haldan Cohn and I lead a research program in this area which includes both observational and theoretical investigations.  We use the WIYN telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope the Chandra X-ray Observatory and a high performance GRAPE-6 N-body supercomputer at IU.  Current studies include:

• Champlane survey: WIYN Hydra spectroscopy of galactic plane x-ray sources
• Globular Clusters: WIYN and HST studies of cluster structure and dynamics, HST and Chandra studies of binary x-ray sources in clusters
• GRAPE-6 N-body supercomputer simulations of the dynamical evolution of globular star clusters

Research collaborators:

Josh Grindlay (Harvard University), Charles Bailyn and Gordon Drukier (Yale University), Adrienne Cool (San Francisco State University) and Brian Murphy (Butler University)

Former Ph.D. students:

Steve Cederbloom (Mount Union College), Robert Grabhorn , Paul Bode (Princeton University), Jim Dull (Albertson College of Idaho), Bob Berrington (Naval Research Laboratory).

Current Ph.D. students:

Shawn Slavin, Allen Rogel

Recent Publications:

• Lugger, P.M., Cohn, H.N., Rogel, A.B., Slavin, S.D., Grindlay, J.E. and Zhao, P. 2002, "WIYN/Hydra Spectroscopy of ChaMPlane Fields,"  Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, 739
• Cohn, H.N., Lugger, P.M., Grindlay, J.E., Edmonds, P.D., Heinke, C.O., Rubenstein, E.P., and Cool, A.M. 2002, "Detection of Chandra X-ray Sources in the Collapsed-Core Globular Cluster M30," Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, 657
• Grindlay, J.E., Camilo, F., Heinke, C., Edmonds, P., Cohn, H., and Lugger, P. 2002, "Chandra Study of a Complete Sample of Millisecond Pulsars in 47 Tuc and NGC 6397," The Astrophysical Journal, in press.
• Cohn, H.N., Lugger, P.M., Grindlay, J.E., and Edmonds, P.D. 2002, "Hubble Space Telescope/NICMOS Observations of Terzan 5: Stellar Content and Structure of the Core," The Astrophysical Journal, 571, 181
• Berrington, R.C., Cohn, H.N., and Lugger, P.M. 2002, "The Dynamics of the Merging Galaxy Cluster A2256," The Astronomical Journal, 123, 2261
• Edmonds, P.D., Grindlay, J.E., Cohn, H.N., and Lugger, P.M.  2001, "Stellar Variability in the Metal-Rich, Obscured Globular Cluster Terzan 5," The Astrophysical Journal, 547, 829
• Drukier, G.A., Cohn, H.N., Lugger, P.M., and Yong, H.  1999, "Anisotropic Fokker-Planck Models for the Evolution of Globular Star Clusters: The Core-Halo Connection," The Astrophysical Journal, 518, 233
• Edmonds, P.D., Grindlay, J.E., Cool, A., Cohn, H., and Lugger, P., and  Bailyn, C. 1999, "Cataclysmic Variables and a Candidate Helium White Dwarf in the Globular Cluster NGC 6397," The Astrophysical Journal, 516, 250