Anatoly Miroshnichenko (biographic information)

I was born in Leningrad (USSR) which is currently known as Saint-Petersburg (Russia). I became an amateur-astronomer in 1973. In 1978 I entered the Leningrad State University (Astronomy Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics, now of the Saint-Petersburg University) and graduated from it in 1983. I always was interested in observational astrophysics, and since my third year at the University I chose to specialize in this branch of astronomy.

During my student years I spent a lot of time doing astrophysical observations at the University station at the Buyrakan Astrophysical Observatory in Armenia. My Diploma thesis (nearly equivalent to M.S.) was devoted to a study of opportunities to observe supernovae in the Milky Way, which have not been observed since Kepler's time (1604). In 1982 - 1999 I worked at the Laboratory of Stellar Physics of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo.

My research interests are focused on early-type stars surrounded by circumstellar envelopes (Herbig Ae/Be stars, B[e] stars, Novae). During my work at Pulkovo, I did observations at three observatories of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute (Almaty, Kazakhstan) with 1-meter telescopes and a two-channel photometer-polarimeter of the Pulkovo Observatory in a spectral range between 0.3 and 2.5 microns. In total I participated to nearly 80 observational runs. Since 1989 I have been doing observations at the 6-meter Russian telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory (North Caucasus, Russia). More than 200 spectra of different stars with circumstellar envelopes have been obtained during nearly 30 observational runs between 1989 and 2008. Since 2001 I also take high-resolution spectra at the 2.1-m and 2.7-m telescopes of the McDonald Observatory (Texas, USA).

In May 1997 I have been invited to work with Prof. Karen Bjorkman  at the Ritter Observatory of the University of Toledo (Ohio, USA) as a post-doctoral research associate. This period ended in June 1998, and I returned back to Pulkovo (Russia). I returned back to Toledo in May 1999 for my second post-doc position funded by NASA Long-Term Space Astrophysics grant. When the project was over, I got a visiting assistant professor position at the University of Toledo in 2004/5.

I received my Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Pulkovo Observatory in October 1992 and a Doctor of Science degree (which is higher than Ph.D.) from the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences in April 2008. In 2007 I announced a discovery of a new type of hot stars that are capable of forming dusty particles (ApJ, 667, 497, 2007). The main feature of the discovery is that it expands the luminosity range of dust-forming hot stars by nearly two orders of magnitude toward lower luminosities. During almost 30 years of my observational activity I have been fully operating 13 telescopes ranging from 0.5-m to 2.7-m.

On 2003 January 13, my son Alexander was born in Toledo, OH!
 

On 2005 July 31, I got started on my new job as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Some photos of me and my family
I am at the University of Toledo (November 2001)
I am with my eldest daughter Anya (Hawaii, 2001)
My wife Tatyana, the youngest daughter Olga, and me (Hamburg, Germany, April 2002)
My son Valdimir and daughter Nadya (Lake Erie, September 2002)
Take a look at my daughter at a younger age Nadia (1996)

Last updated 2008 December 10