Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley, 1981
e-mail sparke_at_astro.wisc.edu
snail-mail: Washburn Observatory, 475 N. Charter Street, Madison WI 53706
I retired from UW-Madison on 7 May 2010, and am currently working in the Astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. My phone number there is 202-358-7335.
My astronomical research at UW-Madison was on the structure and dynamics of galaxies, including observation and modelling of warped disk galaxies and of polar rings around galaxies; dynamical models for bars in spiral galaxies. Since gravity is scale-free, I sometimes indulgde in studies of circumstellar and circumbinary disks in eccentric stellar binaries. At NASA Headquarters, I work on competitions for research awards, and for the Astrophysics Explorers program of PI-led space missions. In 2014-5 I spent a year in Huntsville, AL working with the team operating the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor on the Fermi observatory.
Click here for pdf files describing my postdoc and student advisees
This upper-level undergraduate textbook was first published in October 2000 by
Cambridge University Press.
The Second Edition
was published in February 2007. It won the American Astronomical Society's 2008 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award.
Click here for the Table of Contents and Errata for both editions,
and diagrams for the second edition in a form suitable
for powerpoint presentations.