MJ Mahoney's Home Page

 Last Update: December 22, 2006

MJ mug shot
MJ - Victoria, B.C., Canada, 2006

MJ Mahoney, Ph.D. 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
MS 246-102
4800 Oak Grove Drive 
Pasadena, CA 91109-8099

Link to My Travel Schedule

Link to My Publications

Email:

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Voice Mail:

(818) 354-5584

FAX:

(818) 393-0025

Secretary:

(818) 354-6465

 

 
Dr. M. J. Mahoney is a former radio astronomer with more than thirty years of hands-on experience in designing and building instruments covering the entire radio spectrum from sub-millimeter to decameter wavelengths.  He obtained B.Sc. (Honors), M.Sc., Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the University of British Columbia.  After completing the Ph.D. degree in 1976, Dr. Mahoney became the Resident Director of the University of Maryland's Clark Lake Radio Observatory, where he was responsible for conversion of the observatory's TPT phased array into a powerful decametric-wavelength synthesis telescope. His areas of research included extra-galactic radio sources, supernova remnants, the ISM in normal galaxies, millisecond pulsars, and solar and ionospheric physics.

In 1987, Dr. Mahoney accepted a position at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Microwave Observational Systems section, where he was responsible for payload design studies of various submillimeter wavelength astronomical satellites. These included the Large Deployable Reflector (LDR), the Synthesis Array for Lunar Submillimeter Astronomy (SALSA), the Submillimeter Intermediate Mission (SMIM), and most recently, the Far-Infrared and Submillimeter Space Telescope (FIRST, now Herschel), a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency. To support FIRST, Dr. Mahoney was appointed Submillimeter Technologist to oversee technology development at JPL for the heterodyne submillimeter-wavelength receiver on FIRST.  His astronomical research at JPL has involved the use of mid- infrared cameras to understand the formation and evolution of stars and planetary systems.

From 1992 to 1996 Dr. Mahoney served as the Technical Group Supervisor of the Ground-Based Microwave Applications Group. While supervising this group, he became very interested in the capabilities and potential for the Microwave Temperature Profiler (MTP). In 1996 he resigned the Supervisor position to spend full time on MTP-related research, and has served as Co-I (before 1999) and  PI (after 1998) on the following field campaigns:

I am also an avid photographer. The above links will take you to photo gallery links for these campaigns, or you can link to the photo galleries from  this link.