Paul Kalas facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Paul Kalas
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Paul Kalas in 2015, Cerro Pachón, Chile
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| Born | August 13, 1967 New York City, United States
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| Alma mater | University of Hawaiʻi University of Michigan |
| Known for | Exoplanet Research Fomalhaut, Fomalhaut b |
| Awards | Newcomb Cleveland Prize (2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral advisor | David Jewitt |
Paul Kalas, born on August 13, 1967, is an American astronomer with Greek heritage. He is famous for finding "debris disks" around stars. Imagine these as rings of dust and rock orbiting other stars, similar to the asteroid belt or Kuiper Belt in our own solar system. Paul Kalas also led a team that took the very first pictures of a planet outside our solar system, called an "exoplanet." This planet, named Fomalhaut b, orbits the star Fomalhaut, which is about 25 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is how far light travels in one year – that's a really long distance!
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About Paul Kalas
Paul Kalas was born in New York City. His parents, George Kavallinis and Maria Drettakis, came to the United States from Heraklion, Crete, in Greece.
Education and Career
Paul Kalas went to Detroit Country Day School in Michigan. He then studied astronomy and physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He earned his PhD in Astronomy in 1996 from the University of Hawaiʻi. His main teacher there was astronomer David Jewitt.
After finishing his studies, Kalas worked as a scientist at several places. These included the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He also worked at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, he became a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Paul Kalas lives with his wife, Aspasia Gkika, and their two daughters, Maria-Nikoleta and Natalia. They live near Berkeley, California.
Amazing Discoveries
Paul Kalas has found several "circumstellar disks." These are disks of material that orbit around stars. He used special tools like a coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope. He also used the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A coronagraph helps block out the bright light from a star so scientists can see fainter objects nearby.
Finding Debris Disks
In 1995, he found different shapes in the disk around the star Beta Pictoris. He was the main scientist who took the first pictures of debris disks around two other stars. These were the nearby red dwarf star AU Microscopii and the very bright star Fomalhaut.
Paul Kalas's image of Fomalhaut from the Hubble Space Telescope showed a thin belt of dusty material. This belt is like our own Solar System's Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a region beyond Neptune that has many small, icy bodies.
However, Kalas also found that Fomalhaut's belt is narrow. It is also shifted away from the star by 15 astronomical units. An astronomical unit (AU) is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. These features strongly suggest that an extrasolar planet is orbiting Fomalhaut. This planet's gravity likely shapes the belt.
| AU Microscopii | October 14, 2003 |
| Fomalhaut | May 17, 2004 |
| HD 15115 | July 17, 2006 |
| HD 53143 | September 11, 2004 |
| HD 139664 | October 14, 2004 |
Awards and Honors
Paul Kalas has received several important awards for his work:
- He was chosen as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014.
- He gave the AIAA William H. Pickering Lecture in 2010.
- He won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.
