Harrison
Harper
Astrophysics Photography Software
Astrophysicist, photographer
and builder of things.
About
I develop real-time systems for transient astronomy, and photograph Tasmania in infrared and on film.
My research is in time-domain astronomy, where I build software for finding and following things that change in the night sky. I work on real-time alerts, astronomical data pipelines and rapid follow-up observations.
More about me- Based in
- Hobart, Tasmania
- Degree
- BSc (Hons) Physics, First Class Honours
- University
- University of Tasmania
- Research
- Time-domain astronomy
- Photography
- Infrared, film and digital
Selected research / projects
Pipelines, alerts and software.
All research / projects Honours thesis 2026 Real-Time Transient Detection: Implementing a Semi-Automated Transient Pipeline. Harrison Harper · University of Tasmania Read more GCN Circular 2026 GRB 260511A: UTGO H50 optical afterglow observation H. Harper et al. · University of Tasmania gcn.nasa.gov
- 01 GRB Detection Pipeline Automated FITS reduction pipeline for calibration, source extraction, astrometry and time-based stacking. It produced the University of Tasmania's first confirmed gamma-ray burst detection, which is being prepared for publication.
- 02 GCN Alert Network Persistent Kafka consumer across nine instrument topics that normalises GRB alert formats into a single internal schema. Routes observatory-filtered notifications to observing teams via discord in near real-time.
- 03 3I/ATLAS Photometry Light curv construction for interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Ephemeris queries from NASA JPL Horizons automate aperture placement on the moving target; nightly zero-points are derived from PanSTARRS and SkyMapper catalogues to account for varying conditions across sessions.
- 04 Stowpad Private clipboard manager for Mac that keeps an encrypted, searchable history of everything you copy. It uses on-device OCR to capture text and tables from the screen, then lets you paste any clip back into any app.
- 05 React & Motion Dashboard A dashboard of animations and interactive effects built in React and Motion. Magnetic cursors, physics springs, gesture-driven components, and other UI experiments collected in one place.
Photography
Light, texture and place.
An ongoing archive of infrared, film and digital photographs.
Open the archive12