Home Page of Slavek Rucinski

Professor Emeritus at the Department of Astronomy

To the left is my picture taken in March 1999, 3 months after I started working at DDO as the Support Astronomer and, later, in July 1999, as the Associate Director of the DDO. The 1.88m telescope dome of the David Dunlap Observatory is in the background. Paradoxically, the observatory was closed on July 2, 2008, exactly on my 65th birthday...

You may wish to peruse my recent CV. Also you may see me, and my family photos, by looking at the pictures.

Research activities

My research is related mostly to the problem of the angular momentum evolution in stars, from the stage of formation to coalescence. I have worked some time ago on the interstellar polarization, star formation, proto-stellar disks and stellar atmospheres, but most of my work currently is related to binary stars, especially contact binary stars. I used the DDO 1.88m telescope for spectroscopic observations of close binary stars; for this and similar work I developed the Broadening Function approach which gives far superior results to the Cross-Correlation Function. My other interests are large variable-star databases, including those from micro-lensing surveys such as OGLE or MACHO. For more details on my work, please see my publications as listed below.

A successful proposal to the Canadian Space Agency in 1997 (with Dr. Kieran Carroll of Dynacon, Toronto and University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS)) initiated the MOST micro-satellite project. The MOST project is led by Prof.J.Matthews at the University of British Columbia MOST operations centre, UTIAS Space Flight Lab and Dynacon in Toronto. The satellite is 6.5 years old (end of 2009) and still performs very well. In addition to ~130 primary-target pointings lasting typically a few weeks, the satellite has observed almost two thousand secondary targets.

In 2004, prompted by a question of Dr.R.Zee from the UTIAS Space Flight Lab, I initiated a project to develop a very small nano-satellite for astronomy, the "BRIte Target Explorer", BRITE. It will be a cube 20cm in size with a small lens telescope to observe variability of at least 300 brightest stars with accuracy better than 0.1%. Paradoxically, variability of the brightest stars is currently relatively poorly known due to difficulties with relative photometry over large angular distances in the sky, in the presence of atmospheric extinction. It will be one (CanX-3) in the series nano-satellites, built at UTIAS. A Power Point presentation from 2005 gives a description of the original idea; for newer design features, please consult other pages given here.
The BRITE project has just received funds in Canada (Dec.2010). Our Austrian colleagues have been able to arrange funding for two BRITE satellites , to be launched in 2011. In December 2009, Poland decided to add two more satellites to join the BRITE constellation in 2011 and 2012. There have been interest from other countries in joining the constellation, but at this point 6 satellites are to fly.

I was the Vice President (2003) and then President (2006) of the International Astronomical Union Commission 42 (Close Binary Stars).

Teaching

Publications

Material related to my research

• The short-period binary-star RV-orbits program at DDO: A brief description, all 15 main publications and other papers (.pdf), and tables (.txt) with the published RV data.
• The Broadening Function determination: The "cookbook" and the IDL routines.
• A very convenient Windows interface prepared by Bob Nelson to evaluate broadening functions "Broad15.exe" (right click to save the WinZip file BobNelson.zip).
• The data for the 7.5 magnitude sample of short period binaries: Table 1 in 2002, PASP, 114, 1124.
• The amplitude distribution for contact binaries: The tables in 2001, AJ, 122, 1007.
• The long-period EB-type systems in the Small Magellanic Cloud: Table 1 in 2001, AJ, 121, 254.
• WUMa systems in globular clusters: The tables in 2000, AJ, 120, 319.
• WUMa, galactic-disk systems in the BW sample and in open clusters: The tables in the paper comparing the Baade's Window sample with the open clusters sample, 1998, AJ, 116, 2998)
• Fourier coefficients and eclipse depths for WUMa systems: The tables in 1993, PASP, 105, 1433.
• Results for contact systems in the direction of Baade's Window: Tables in papers OGLE-1 and -2: 1997, AJ, 113, 407 and 1112
• Fourier coefficients and depth of minima for hot contact systems: Tables in OGLE-3 paper, 1998, AJ, 115, 1135.
• The Hipparcos based calibration (RD97): Table 1 of the data in 1997, PASP, 109, 1340 (with H.W. Duerbeck).

How to Contact Me:

The postal address is:
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Toronto
50 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3H4

My e-mail is: rucinskiATastro.utoronto.ca
(please replace AT by the correct character; I don't want robots to contact me...)

(Return to Department of Astronomy homepage)

Update: December 2010