Morag Hastie

Astronomer, Instrument Coordinator.

Astronomer, Instrument Coordinator.

• Responsible for leading the Instrumentation Group, supporting current and future instrumentation, supporting astronomers observing at the MMT
• Personal science interests includes; magnetic fields on young stars, stellar dynamos, optical & infrared instrumentation development

Short Bio

Morag completed her BSc Honours degree in Astrophysics at the University of St Andrews in 1999. After some time out of academia she went on to gain her MPhil in Radio Astronomy (by dissertation) from the University of Manchester in 2001. In September 2001 she was employed by the UKATC, Edinburgh as part of the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) South instrument team. Her involvement with GMOS spanned from the ‘Integration & Testing’ phase through the instrument commissioning at the Gemini South Telescope on Cerro Pachon, Chile. After returning from Chile in 2003 she went on to start her PhD at the IfA, University of Edinburgh during which she was part of the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) instrument team and stayed with the team through instrument commissioning at the UK Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Her science portion of her PhD investigated the chromospheric magnetic activity on T Tauri stars in the Rho Ophiuchus & Upper Scorpius regions. During her PhD she was awarded an eight month studentship at the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching, Germany. After completion of her PhD in early 2007 she arrived at the MMT Observatory as the ‘Firestone Postdoctoral Fellowship’ where she settled into observatory life and assisted with new instrumentation arriving at the telescope. In March 2009 she was folded into the observatory staff as a staff scientist and stepped into the Instrument Coordinator role. She continues to pursue her own research interests primarily with a new international collaboration investigating stellar activity with the Kepler space telescope and the MMT.