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Masen Lamb’s research interests lie mainly within the field of adaptive optics instrumentation. He focuses on both the development and calibration of these systems and uses them to study interesting features within the Milky Way Galaxy.
To date, adaptive optics has led to major advances in astronomical imaging, such as the ability to directly image exoplanetary systems or track the motions of stars orbiting the blackhole at the centre of our galaxy. Its capabilities with spectroscopy are emerging, and Lamb works to exploit the use of adaptive optics and stellar spectroscopy to identify chemically interesting stars in regions otherwise unaccessible without the technology; such regions include the Galactic Centre and the cores of globular clusters.
During his PhD, Lamb was able to observe metal-poor stars within the galactic bulge with adaptive optics, helping to fill in the tail end of the metal-poor sample in this metal-rich region. As part of his PhD, Lamb helped develop and calibrate Raven, a new type of adaptive optics system for the Subaru Telescope.
More recently, an instrument similar to Raven called GIRMOS has been approved and will be built at the Dunlap Institute, where Lamb will be involved with both the development and calibration of this instrument.
His research into adaptive optics calibration procedures has been used to identify telescope and instrument errors within VLT/SPHERE, Keck and, more recently, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). He will continue to explore their applications for the upcoming thirty-meter class telescopes.
Lamb received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Victoria, and his BSc in Astronomy from the University of British Columbia. He joined the Dunlap Institute in 2017.
