Tom Landecker

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Astronomer and Engineer
Ph.D. 1970 (Sydney University)
Adjunct Professor at UBC Okanagan
Adjunct Professor at University of Calgary
Adjunct Professor at University of Sydney
Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory
Phone: +1 250 497-2304
Fax: +1 250 497-2355
Email: first name [dot] last name [at] nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

ADS Publications

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Areas of Interest: Radio polarization, magnetic fields, interstellar medium, supernova remnants, antennas, radio astronomy instrumentation
Tom Landecker was Principal Research Officer in the Radio Astronomy Program of NRC-Herzberg until his retirement in January 2014. He is continuing his research in astronomy and the engineering of radio telescopes.
Tom is the Principal Investigator of the Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey. GMIMS is an ambitious project to map the polarized radio emission from the entire sky, North and South, using large single-antenna radio telescopes (to date the 26-m DRAO John A. Galt Telescope and the Parkes 64-m Telescope). The project aspires to complete frequency coverage from 300 to 1800 MHz with thousands of frequency channels. Rotation Measure Synthesis and other techniques are being used to establish the 3D structure of the magnetic field in the Milky Way.

Tom is co-PI of the Polarization Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM) one of the first science projects with ASKAP (the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder). POSSUM will eventually employ ASKAP to determine about one million rotation measures from observations of extragalactic sources. First science observations are expected to begin in 2015.

Tom was Director of DRAO from 1994 to 2007, and led the observational and data reduction effort at DRAO for the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey. He is continuing to do research with CGPS data, especially with the polarization data, investigating the role of magnetic fields in the interstellar medium.

Tom is a member of the CHIME science team. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment is a university-led project that is building a telescope at DRAO to investigate the mass distribution in the Universe between redshifts of 0.8 and 2.5, observing hydrogen redshifted from 1420 MHz to the range 400 to 800 MHz. The project is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

On the engineering side, Tom maintains his interest in radio astronomy instrumentation, especially antennas. He is currently co-supervising a Ph.D. student working in Electrical Engineering at UBC Okanagan on the development of single-pixel wideband feeds for the SKA. He participates in the operation and development of the DRAO Synthesis Telescope and the John A. Galt Telescope.

Tom holds Adjunct appointments at the University of Calgary (Physics and Astronomy), the University of British Columbia Okanagan (Engineering), and the University of Sydney (Physics).