Faculty

Brian K. Dennison

Glaxo Wellcome Professor and Professor of Physics

Brian is the endowed UNC Asheville Glaxo Wellcome Professor. He is the former Director of the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics at Virginia Tech, and former Professor of Physics at Virginia Tech. With his research background in astronomy, Brian works in conjunction with the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in Rosman, North Carolina.

Brian came to UNC Asheville with a long track record of publications in astrophysics. His current fields of interest are radio astronomy, astrophysics, and optical astronomy of the interstellar medium. One day each week he travels to PARI in Rosman, NC. This observatory, 45 minutes away from UNC Asheville, contains two large 26-meter (85 feet) dishes among its array of telescopes. Click on PARI in the left menu to visit this impressive site, which was formerly used by NASA and then by the US Defense Department.

Education

• Ph.D., Cornell University, 1976

Selected Publications

 

1. P. Mukherjee, B. Dennison, B. Ratra, J. H. Simonetti, K. Ganga, and J.-C. Hamilton, "Galactic Foregrounds in OVRO and UCSB South Pole 1994 Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Data," Astrophysical Journal 579, 83 (2002).
2. T. J. Lazio, A. L. Fey, B. Dennison, F. Mantovani, J. H. Simonetti, A. Alberdi, A. R. Foley, R. Fiedler, M. A. Garrett, H. Hirabayashi, D. L. Jauncey, K. J. Johnston, J. Marcaide, V. Migenes, G. D. Nicolson, and T. Venturi, "The Extreme Scattering Event Toward PKS 1741-038: VLBI Images," Astrophysical Journal 534, 706 (2000).
3. J. F. Salgado, D. R. Altschuler, T. Ghosh, B. Dennison, K. J. Mitchell, and H. E. Payne, "A Fourteen-Year Monitoring Program Monitoring the Flux Densities of 33 Radio Sources at Low Frequencies," Astrophysical Journal (Supplement) 120, 77 (1999).
4. D. A. Boboltz, J. H. Simonetti, B. Dennison, P. J. Diamond, and J. A. Uphoff, "A Water Maser Flare in W49N: Amplification by a Rotating Foreground Cloud," Astrophysical Journal 509, 256 (1998).
5. B. Dennison, G. A. Topasna, and J. H. Simonetti, "Detection in Hα of a Supershell Associated with W4," Astrophysical Journal (Letters) 474, L31 (1997).
6. J. H. Simonetti, B. Dennison, and G. A. Topasna, "The Contribution of Galactic Free-Free Emision to Anisotropies in the Cosmic Background Found by the Saskatoon Experiment," Astrophysical Journal (Letters) 458, L1 (1996).
7. R. L. Fiedler, T. Pauls, K. J. Johnston, and B. Dennison, "Galactic Structures Associated with ESE's in the Radio Light Curves of NRAO 140, 0954+658, and 2352+495," Astrophysical Journal 430, 595 (1994).