Thomas Ashcraft
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Thomas Ashcraft (born 1951) is an American scientist, naturalist, scientific instrument-maker, and artist.[1] He is known for his observations of transient luminous events (lightning sprites),[2] meteoric fireballs,[3] solar radio and optical phenomena,[4] and Jupiter radio emissions.[5]
He is currently artist and citizen scientist in residence at the Santa Fe Institute.[6] He resides and maintains a laboratory and studio outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico where he operates the Observatory of Heliotown.[7]
Biography
Thomas Ashcraft was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1951.
Ashcraft studied natural philosophy at McGill University in Montreal from 1972 through 1975. After college, he moved to the Arkansas Ozarks and became an artisan building custom tools for artists in the form of weaving looms and quilting frames.
In the early 1980s, Ashcraft was an initiator of the OAK Currency Project which was an Ozark-wide bioregional economic experiment.[8]
In 1987, Ashcraft moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to pursue an art, sculpture, and independent science practice.
In 1992, he built the Radio Fireball Observatory[9] for monitoring and recording fireballs, space dust, and meteoric phenomena. He has made numerous innovations in the merging of optical and radio telescope technology.[10] In 2001, he began observing Jupiter, the sun, and ionospheric phenomena with NASA’s Radio Jove Project.[11]
In 2009, Ashcraft began noting lightning-generated phenomena called transient luminous events (red sprites)[12] on his radio-optical telescope systems. Over time he has established a multi-faceted observatory devoted to the capture and study of this rarely imaged phenomenon.[13]
Art practice
Ashcraft is primarily a sculptor and installation artist incorporating space, time, mind, sound, and electricity.[14] He is also a figurative sculptor exploring biological subjects such bacteriophages, viruses, microbes, and medicinal plants.[15] He was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Prize [16] in art in 2005.
References
- ^ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/488/thomas-ashcraft/
- ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/science/on-the-hunt-for-a-sprite-on-a-midsummers-night.html?_r=0
- ^ https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210315.html
- ^ https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123694113?storyId=123694113
- ^ https://agu2020fallmeeting-agu.ipostersessions.com/?s=32-A3-44-20-C9-2D-4A-0C-32-1B-BF-24-44-37-32-C3
- ^ https://www.santafe.edu/culture/heliotown-ii
- ^ https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/citizen-scientist-driven-by-the-need-to-discover/article_ef9e2a1c-07eb-11eb-895e-532df1d8b495.html
- ^ https://centerforneweconomics.org/newsletters/bioregionalism-tribal-sovereignty-and-regional-banking/
- ^ https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/artist-turned-astronomer-tracks-the-galaxy-s-glowing-traveling-orbs/article_a17666f9-a0f2-5679-97a0-07dde7ae00ed.html
- ^ https://gizmodo.com/how-a-mysterious-sky-phenomenon-was-explained-by-high-s-880432593
- ^ https://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/newsletters/2002Oct/index.html
- ^ https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210104.html
- ^ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/transient-luminous-events/?viewall=true
- ^ http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-070/explorations-of-the-invisibles-freedom-power-in-the-electromagnetic/
- ^ https://improvisedlife.com/2020/03/05/thomas-ashcrafts-hopeful-reminder-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/
- ^ https://www.louiscomforttiffanyfoundation.org/2005/thomas-ashcraft
External links
- Heliotown, Thomas Ashcraft's website
- Explore. Examine. Discover. Report. (p.6), Parallax newsletter of the Santa Fe Institute (also online)
- Sprite Lightning at 100,000 Frames Per Second, NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
- Fireball Over New Mexico - November 9, 2012, Lamy, NM, Youtube channel of Sandia National Laboratories
- Fireball Over New Mexico - September 21, 2010, Lamy, NM, Youtube channel of Sandia National Laboratories
- Video and Photographic Investigations of Lightning and Transient Luminous Events, American Meteorological Society
- Audio: DIY Recordings of Awakening Sun, WIRED Science
- Observing Lightning from the International SpaceStation, March 23, 2021, NASA ScienceCasts
- Introducing, the Green Ghost, Space Weather Archive
- Thomas Ashcraft, New Mexico PBS ¡COLORES!
- Biggest Solar X-Ray Flare on Record - X20 - Sound, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
- Thomas Ashcraft, profile for Currents New Media Festival
- Observations of two sprite-producing storms in Colorado, American Geophysical Union, JGR papers
- Coordinated observations of sprites and in-cloud lightning flash structure, American Geophysical Union, JGR papers
- A Fresh Look at Jovian Decametric Radio Emission Occurrence Probabilities in the CML-Io Phase Plane, American Geophysical Union/NASA conference poster
- Thunderstorms as Possible HF Radiation Sources of Propagation TeePee Signatures, American Geophysical Union/NASA conference poster
- A Selection of Spaceweather Citations, Heliotown.com
- Passing fireball lights up New Mexico, The Santa Fe New Mexican
- Invisible Fields: Geographies of Radio Waves, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain
- Thomas Ashcraft - Electroreceptor, Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (ch. 15), California Scholarship Online
- Thomas Ashcraft: radioastronom artysta, Polytika
- Radio Fireball Observatory Archives, Heliotown.com
- Time Dilation Experiments, 1998 exhibition for SITE Santa Fe gallery
- Thomas Ashcraft, 2004 exhibition for CUE Art Foundation, NYC
- Art in Review; Thomas Ashcraft, New York Times review of 2005 CUE Art Foundation exhibition
- Ballroom Marfa: 'Strange Attractor', 2017 exhibition for Ballroom Marfa, Texas, U.S.A., World Art Foundations website