Marc W. Buie

Marc William Buie (/ˈbuːiː/; born 1958) is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets, who used to be at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and also the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events. In 2008 Marc Buie moved to Boulder, Colorado to work at the Southwest Research Institute in the Space Science Department.

Buie grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and received his B.Sc. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1980. He then switched fields and earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1984. Dr. Buie was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he played a key role in the planning and scheduling of the first planetary observations ever made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Buie joined the staff at Lowell Observatory in 1991.

Since 1983 Pluto has been a central theme of research done by Buie, who has published over 85 scientific papers and journal articles. His first result was to prove that the methane visible on Pluto was on its surface and not part of its atmosphere. Since then he has worked on albedo maps of the surface, composition maps of Pluto and Charon, refinement of the orbits of Charon in addition to the much more recently discovered satellites, measurements of the structure of the atmosphere, and other measurements of the properties of the surfaces of Pluto and Charon - just to name a few. He is also one of the co-discoverers of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra.

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