Henry C. Ferguson

I am an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. My research interests center on galaxy evolution and cosmology. I currently serve as lead of the Webb Instrument Team, which is preparing to support instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope.

I am also co-Principal Investigator of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), a 3-year observing program using Hubble to study the most distant galaxies and to provide better measurements of the expansion-history of the universe.

On the longer term, I serve as head of the Galaxies Collaboration for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a wide-field optical survey telescope to be built in Chile. The survey is expected to start in 2019 and last for 10 years.

Other research efforts have included:

Studies of the distant universe using deep reference fields, such as The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey(GOODS), the original Hubble Deep Fields (North and South), and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Studies of Nearby galaxies, including dissecting, star-by-star, the stellar populations in the outer parts of nearby galaxies, such as the Andromeda galaxy, other nearby spiral galaxies, and intergalactic stars in nearby clusters; studying galaxies selected by the neutral hydrogen in the SINGG project; studying dwarf galaxies, these days as part of the Coma Cluster Treasury Program.

Measuring cosmological parameters. Using nearby galaxies to measure the Hubble constant, and more distant supernovae to measure the acceleration of the universe.

I have been a co-investigator on the Advance Dark Energy Physics Telescope (ADEPT) concept study and served on the Science and Technology Definition Team for The Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C).