Dirk Terrell (born August 14, 1965) is an American
astronomer and
space artist who is the Director of the Computer and Software Sciences section in the Planetary Science Directorate of the Space Science and Engineering division of the
Southwest Research Institute.[1] He is a Fellow and former President of the International Association of Astronomical Artists.[2] He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from
Clemson University and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the
University of Florida.
Career
In 2013, he was a member of a team of scientists that discovered and characterized the extrasolar planet
Kepler-64b, a.k.a. PH1, the first planet discovered in a quadruple star system.[3] He showed that suspected
transits in the
Kepler Space Telescope data of the system were indeed due to a planet transiting the eclipsing binary in the system.[4][5] In 2014, he helped discover and characterize planets in three additional stellar systems, including
Kepler-88 and
Kepler-247.[6]
He is a core team member of the AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS), a photometric survey of over 100 million stars, providing measurements in eight photometric filters.