Date: February 19, 2010

Title: 4 Astronomers on Why They Do It

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Podcaster: Sandy Antunes

Organization: Project Calliope LLC: ProjectCalliope.com
Scientific Blogging: http://scientificblogging.com/sky_day

Description: 4 randomly chosen astronomers at the AAS meeting explain why they became astronomers, then try to explain their research is just 30 seconds.

Bio: Dr. Alex “Sandy” Antunes is a scientist and science writer. He worked for 5 NASA missions as an astronomer, solar physicist, and computing expert, and has over 150 publications and talks on science, game design, and social media. He’s also launching a personal satellite to mix music and science, at ProjectCalliope.com, as proof that we’re in a new era of space exploration. He writes twice a week at ScientificBlogging.com/sky_day.

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Bob Moler, an amateur astronomer in northern lower Michigan, and volunteer broadcaster of the week-daily astronomy program, Ephemeris, on Interlochen Public for what will be 35 years this June 1st.

Transcript:

[Sandy] I’m Alex Antunes, I’m an astrophysicist, and I’m standing in the icy cold on an outdoor train station platform about to head to the 215th AAS [American Astronomical Society]. I’ll be asking some random people some not very random questions. Stay tuned on 365 Days of Astronomy.

[Sandy] Okay, I’m with Lea Zernow. She’s presenting a poster on “GALEX Detection of Star Formation In and Around E and SO Galaxies”. Why did you go into astronomy?

[Lea] So I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was in early elementary school, I always enjoyed going out and watching meteor shows and things like that. When I was in 3rd grade I decided I wanted to be the first person on Mars. So I’ve always been interested in astronomy. I went through elementary and middle and high school knowing I wanted to study astronomy, so by the time I came to college and got the opportunity to do research in it, I discovered that it was, indeed, still very exciting. I still have a secret desire to study Mars but we’ll see where that goes.

[Sandy] So you say you saw meteor showers, where did you grow up, that you had clear skies? We’re in DC right now where you can’t see those things…

[Lea] Indeed. I grew up in Southern California outside of San Diego in the little town of Alpine, there isn’t quite so much light pollution out there, so from my backyard you can see, sometimes, the Milky Way, especially if you go out there at 2am in the morning, sometimes on school nights, to go watch the awesome meteor showers that come around.

[Sandy] Can you describe your research in 30 seconds or less?

[Lea] Okay, so what I’m doing is I am looking at elliptical galaxies, which are really big egg-shaped galaxies. The big idea about elliptical galaxies is that people think they are red and dead, which basically means there’s a lot of old red stars and no gas, no dust, no star formation. What we’re doing is we’re using GALEX, which looks at the sky in ultraviolet, and looking in ultraviolet is a good indicator of star formation. So when we see ultraviolet, we see star formation as well. So when we looked at a bunch of elliptical galaxies we see, in a lot of them, that there is ultraviolet and that they’re in some really crazy unusual patterns– we see rings, we see streams, we see all sorts of really interesting things. So unlike previously thought, these galaxies are not red and dead, they actually are a lot of them with star formation going on.

[cut]

[Sandy] So I’m here with Aparna Maybhate and Norman Grogrin. Okay, so why did you go into astronomy, we’ll start with that.

[Aparna] When I was growing up, I was in high school and college and I started seeing all these great pictures of these great interacting galaxies and it was just so…

[Sandy, interrupts] Yay, yay, interacting galaxies, that was my disseration!

[Aparna, con’t] … and it was just so wonderful that I thought, maybe this is what I want to do, it’s really glamorous. So I started off with a PhD in astronomy, been working on interacting galaxies and mergers ever since.

[Sandy] Excellent. And you?

[Norman] I recall being turned onto astronomy back when I was maybe ten or so, that was around the time that Carl Sagan wrote his “Cosmos” book. I remember reading through that with my family, being quite interested in all this astronomy work, and through the years I got into math and science and did a physics undergraduate degree, and then coming out of undergrad I went into an astronomy graduate program, really loved the work, and that led me on to going to Space Telescope.

[Sandy] So basically, for you, dicovered it as a kid and was bitten, and for you, in high school realized that’s the path you wanted to take. I’m hearing these stories a lot, I’m finding it very heartening.

[Aparna] So we are presenting posters here which is basically telling you how ACIS is performing after the servicing mission.

[Norman] This is the camera that was taking the majority of pictures that Hubble was doing back 2002 to 2007. It had failed, it had an electrical shortout, and we got it repaired and people are using it again, so it’s great news for Hubble and great news for astronomy.

[Sandy] Okay, well thank you both very much for your time!

[cut]

[Sandy] I’m with Irena Spassova. Alright, why did you go into astronomy?

[Irena] It was very simple, very stereotypical, I always liked looking at the stars, and then I got into college and I started learning about physics and learning about the stars. And I just found it really, really interesting and wanted to do more of it all of the time, so… that’s why I’m here, that’s why I am enjoying this so much.

[Sandy] It’s a great place to be, being at the largest [noise] She’s going to explain “Developing Neutron Detector Array VANDLE for Nucleosynthesis Studies in X-ray Bursts and Supernova Explosions”. Concisely.

[Irena] Yes.

[Sandy] Good luck.

[Irena, laughs] I know. I spent my summer testing a prototype for a neutron detector that’ll help us learn about reactions that take place when a star goes supernova, or other such high energy events. We use a particle accelerator and then we structure it around the target, and the particle accelerator accelerates a deuteron beam, which is a proton and a neutron, and that will collide with the target, and that will give off particles, and that’s what we’ll measure to see what kind of collision it was and the kinematics of it. Oh, so you’re actually doing experiments that you can then match up to neutron events that are observed from astronomical events.

[Irena] Yes.

[Sandy] Well, that’s great, because astronomy is often said to not be an experimental science because…

[Irena] Yeah, but it obviously is!

[Sandy] So you’ve just created astronomy as an experimental science, good. Well, thank you very much for your time.

[Irena] Thank you! [pause] [quietly] I think I went over.

[break]

[Sandy] And that’s a wrap. I’ll see you next month at 365 Days of Astronomy, and you can read me twice a week at ScientificBlogging.com. This is Sandy Antunes, the daytime astronomer, signing off,

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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