Eliot Young is a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute's Space Studies Department in Boulder, CO.

Current Research


Venus's Lower Cloud Deck
Imaging of Venus's lower could deck through various infrared passbands. Goal: to learn how angular momentum is transferred throughout Venus's atmosphere.
Titan's Atmosphere
Imaging of Titan's atmosphere in wavelengths that probe from the surface to the stratosphere, several hundred km high. Goal: to observe the rapidly changing distribution of aerosols and methane gas over the last decade.
Pluto's and Triton's Interacting Surfaces and Atmospheres
Occultations, HST imaging and spectroscopic observations of Pluto and Triton. Goal: to understand volatile transport on Pluto and Triton.
An Image Reconstruction Pipeline for the IRTF
A (mostly) automated data pipeline to sharpen images obtained from NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility.
Neural Nets Applied to Spectroscopy of Solar System Surface Frosts
Goal: Use neural nets to determine compositions, concentrations, temperatures, and grain sizes of various frosts from details of their spectral signatures.
Portable High-Speed Occultation Systems
A set of four telescopes and detectors that can be deployed to sites around the world as necessary to observe occultations.

Some Presentations



Stellar Occultations: Chasing the Elusive Atmospheres of Pluto, Eris and other TNOs 5-AUG-2012, Dartmouth College.

The 2003 Titan Occultation DPS Meeting, Oct 2012.

HST-Like Performance from Balloon-borne Telescopes Next Generation Subortbital Reseachers Conference, Palo Alto, CA, Feb. 2012.

Sub-Arcsecond Performance of the ST5000 Star Tracker on a Balloon-Borne Platform IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, Mar 2012.