Graduate Students: Deno Stelter

Deno Stelter defines himself as a Colorado boy from the Western Slope. He doesn’t remember when he started to like astronomy, probably because he liked it even before he could remember. According to his parents his first word was “light” and as a child he used to read sci-fi books and later every general-level astronomy book he could get his hands on.

Astrophysics seemed a natural choice for him so he went to University of Colorado at Boulder, for college. He spent one year abroad, in Germany. He picked Germany because his dad has German ancestry. “I went to Bavaria, in southern Germany, which is the fun part of the country. I speak some German, but with southern accent, so other Germans make fun of me.”

At the beginning of his last college year, he told his professors that he wanted to go to grad school. One of them looked at him and answered: “Ok, but let me tell you, every year we graduate ten people in astrophysics, of those half apply to grad school and of those half get in. From those who get in and finish their programs half will get a job in the industry and the other half won’t find any jobs, and from those who get the jobs, only half of them will become professors.” It’s a pessimistic point of view but somewhat right, says Deno, but he decided to pursue it anyway.

While facing the regular trials and tribulations, like taking the GRE and figuring out which schools to apply to, Deno talked to his undergrad advisor who told him to check the UF instrumentation program. “I did, and I found that there were a lot of cool things going on. I also applied to University of Arizona, California Santa Cruz and Hawaii. UF was the first school I heard back from so it made the choice very easy.”

Deno, working along with Prof Stephen Eikenberry, has inherited a project previously developed by former graduate student, Mark Keremedjiev. The second-generation of an instrument called SPIFS which stands for SPeckle stabilized Integral Field Spectrometer. Its successor has been named Speckle Stabilized Science Demonstrator, “that’s S^3D, or Scubed D, which sounds like Scooby Doo. I’m so proud of that name” Deno says.

The purpose of the instrument is to nullify the effects of the atmosphere in ground based telescopes and to do it cheaply. “If we get the funding, we are planning some major changes. The heart of the system is a fast steering mirror, which basically moves following the movement of atmosphere, so the light from the object we are observing always hit the same point of the detector or CCD. We are getting a faster one and also, buying a better guiding camera and a new science camera. I’ll also be doing lab experiments redefining the algorithm that moves the mirror. I’ve been talking to a Russian professor in physics; he worked on mis misssile guidance systems back in the Soviet Union. He explained how, when guiding a rocket, they compensate the time it took for the computer to calculate the orders by considering where the rocket will be instead of where it was and meanwhile everything else was moving and getting ready. As a result the system worked much faster. I thought this could be useful to speed things up with our instrument. So let’s see how things work out. I have to play around with that.”

This is only part of the work for a 2^nd year student. Deno has also to attend his classes and he teaches two groups of students as a teaching assistant. “I don’t have much time to enjoy all the other things in Gainesville. Luckily my fiancé is here which keeps me sane. There is much to do here. Specially there is a great German bar called ‘Stubbies & Steins’ which makes me feel like I’m back in Germany.” 

But Deno and his officemates have other hobbies well known by the entire department. An arsenal of NERF weaponry fills the shelves of their office, number 401. If you enter there you might step into an open war at any time. Any provocation might pull the trigger to a nasty battle where foamy darts fly in every possible direction. According to Deno, it all started when graduate student Connor Mancone, brought “a simple 6 barrel NERF gun” and shot Robert (Morehead) with it. Robert said that wont do and got himself another gun, and that prompted Amanda (Townsend) to get one. That’s how the arms race begun. “When office 401 was cleared out to grad students it just accelerated. For his birthday Robert got a much bigger gun and things snowballed. ..  vdgdvIt got really big, and now we have almost enough to supply every member of the department with at least one weapon and ammo to spare. It’s disturbing, but also a great release of tension. Maybe at some point we will organize a major battle”