James W. Young (aka Jim Young) was born in
Portland, Oregon and recently retired as the resident astronomer of the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory's
Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) near
Wrightwood, California having been with them for 47 years. Young was the lead technical guide at the
NASA exhibit of the
Seattle World's Fair during 1962. It was there he was encouraged to apply for an 'assistant observer' and 'darkroom technician' position at the recently developed Table Mountain Observatory with its new
telescope which had just begun full operations in late 1962.
Table Mountain Observatory Along with
Charles F. Capen, Jr. (TMO's first resident astronomer), Young carried out photographic synoptic patrols using specific colors (
UV through
IR) of
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter, and
Saturn. Several technical reports were published of 'patrol' images of
Mars during two Martian
apparitions (1964–65 and 1966–67). The 1964
inferior conjunction of Venus was well observed from TMO. Color
astrophotography was carefully investigated for planetary imaging using recently developed high speed color film
emulsions. With the newly (1966) installed
Cassegrain/Coudé telescope, Young began his asteroid observations with JPL astronomers,
Ellis D. Miner and
Alan W. Harris. Asteroid rotational rates became his speciality soon thereafter and by 1980, over 30 publications in
Icarus with Alan W. Harris resulted in nearly half of the (then) known rotational rates of these small solar system bodies. With the advent of powerful
lasers, Young became involved with several projects that aimed lasers successfully, first at the
Surveyor VII spacecraft on the
Moon (1968), later as two laser ranging programs developed at JPL in the 1990s found their marks on low and high earth orbiting
satellites, and finally to the
Galileo spacecraft some 6 million kilometers from Earth. In each case, Young was responsible for aiming/tracking the telescope on each successive target.
Hypersensitization Other noteworthy projects Young was involved in included the 1969 installation of a large planetary
spectrograph utilizing the Coudé focus of the telescope. Spectroscopic studies of the planet Venus were carried out by JPL astronomers,
Andrew and
Louise Young, with Jim Young assisting with
hypersensitization of
Eastman Kodak IR spectroscopic glass plates. Jim Young developed a new technique of cold storage for these extremely sensitive plates. His experimentation of 'clean' and properly washed plates, stored at −70 °C. for over two years, were without increased noise or loss of sensitivity. Previous experimenters could manage around a two-month reliability.
2-Micron All Sky Survey In 1998, Young was asked to be an official observer for the 2-Micron All Sky Survey (
2MASS), a joint venture of Caltech (
California Institute of Technology) and the
University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass). Young carried out observations for this project at
Mount Hopkins (south of
Tucson, Arizona) and at the
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in
Chile until 2000, all the while maintaining his full Table Mountain Observatory responsibilities for JPL.
Near Earth Objects Late in 2002, Young began his last asteroid research, centering on NEOs and
comets that have been discovered by several NASA funded NEO search teams such as
NEAT,
LINEAR,
LONEOS,
Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), and
Spacewatch. With the use of
Astrometrica software, Young become an extremely prolific
astrometrist for the
Minor Planet Center (MPC) of the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. The director of the MPC, Dr.
Brian G. Marsden called Young the third most accurate and reliable observer in the world then. He also co-authored and authored over 1500 MPECs (
Minor Planet Electronic Circulars) and IAUCs (
International Astronomical Union Circulars) during these last 7 years at JPL. NASA awarded Young a three-year grant to further his studies of NEOs and comets for JPL and the MPC during the last years before his retirement. In 2003 Young accepted a new responsibility as 'Astronomy Team Leader' at Table Mountain, and supervised a staff of three employees in maintaining two optical telescopes (0.4 and 0.6 meter cassegrain systems), four CCD cameras, and a computer network of over 20 computers. Young maintained the optical performance of the telescopes, and the vacuum requirements for the CCD cameras. He also was in charge of the telescope scheduling for all visiting astronomers and his staff. TMO recently placed their new on-line webpage for all users as well as the public (see below link).
List of discovered minor planets James Whitney Young is credited as "J. W. Young" by the
Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 256
minor planets made between 2002 and 2009. } } ||1 May 2006|| } ||3 September 2006|| } ||22 May 2003|| == Outreach ==