Astronomy at the USAF Geophysics Lab.

An unauthorized history of astronomy at the U.S. Air Force Geophysics Laboratory

AFGL	Phillips Lab	AF Research Lab

On three occasions I've conducted astronomy research in the same building at Hanscom Air Force Base next to Lexington, Massachusetts, and each time I've worked at a laboratory with a different name. But it's always been the same lab, and it's always been at Hanscom Air Force Base.

The U.S. Air Force created the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories at Hanscom Field in 1949. Scientists and engineers at this lab studied many aspects of geophysics for the Air Force, and in 1974, it became the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL).

Both before and after this redesignation, astronomers at the lab were surveying the infrared sky using telescopes launched on a series of sounding rockets under the direction of Russ Walker, then Tom Murdock, and finally Stephan Price. They released preliminary lists of sources from the survey while the lab was still the Cambridge Research Lab., so many astronomers from the 1970s refer to these sources as CRL this or that. But the first complete survey, released in 1976, was the AFGL Four Color Infrared Sky Survey, so most astronomers use the prefix "AFGL" to refer to the same objects. Steve Price continued to expand and improve the survey with the launch of sounding rockets into the 1980s, releasing the Revised AFGL Infrared Sky Survey Catalog in 1983.

During the 1980s, the Air Force Geophysics Lab. funded programs at three observatories to follow up the AFGL catalog with ground-based photometry. They also continued to develop instrumentation, including the first long-slit spectrometer for thermal infrared wavelengths. In the summer of 1987, I came to the AFGL as a summer research associate to help with the development of their spectrometer and its use at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory. This project evolved into my Ph.D. dissertation.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that my first post-doctoral fellowship in 1992 was with Steve Price's group at Hanscom. In 1991, though, the Air Force had changed the name of the lab again. This time, AFGL was merged with the Air Force Weapons Lab at Kirtland Air Force Base as the Air Force Phillips Laboratory. The old AFGL at Hanscom formed the Geophysics Directorate of Phillips Lab. By this time, Price's group was heavily involved in development of the Air Force's infrared satellite, known as the Midcourse Space Experiment, or MSX.

I returned to Hanscom and Steve Price's astronomy group for a third time in 2000 to help with their analysis of spectroscopic data from the Infrared Space Observatory. And not surprisingly, the name of the lab. had changed again. In 1997, Phillips Lab. became the Space Vehicles Directorate of the Air Force Research Lab. Sadly, there is virtually nothing on their web-site from the old AFGL to be found.

I wonder what the next name of the old Air Force Geophysics Lab. will be.

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