Gamma Ray Astronomer

It’s a varied role. Every day it turns out that we have very different kinds of things to do. We don’t do a lot of individual answering of questions. The web as really changed that. Nowadays, you get very few questions from people because they can Google it and be shown a thousand answers. We do have the Space Visualization Lab where we answer visitor’s questions everyday for an hour. We also talk about our research.

We go to schools and talk to groups and we do career days, so that's interesting because the children are just starting to get interested in one field or another. We also judge science fairs.

We also help with producing the exhibits and sky shows. That’s what I was doing for 15 years before I came to the Astronomy Department- I was the producer of sky shows. So I see the other side of things where you’re trying to get the public captured by visual means and by a story. So I try to do the same thing when I’m talking to groups. Visually, astronomy is so dynamic. We have so many beautiful images.

Since I was a young child, I have always been interested in science. I remember placing sticks in the sand of the school playground and timing how long recess lasted by watching the changing shadow. Perhaps my interest in Astronomy was sparked by a friend of my father's who gave me a few paperback books when I was about 10 years old that discussed people like Copernicus, Galileo and Einstein and their theories about how the universe worked and compared them to current scientific thought. Although I didn't understand everything in those books at that time, they helped me to focus my interests in Astronomy.

I enjoy talking with the public and explaining Astronomy or other science topics. Many people are fascinated with science, but often have a difficult time understanding certain concepts. I believe I can help them to understand these difficult concepts by developing analogies or using examples from everyday experiences.

If you’re still in school, you should take as much math and science, specifically physics, as possible. Typically when you go to graduate school, you major in Physics. There are only a couple thousand jobs in astronomy in this country and they all have PhDs now. If you don’t have a Ph.D. in Astronomy or Physics, you really can’t have the choicest kinds of jobs out there in terms of science or even engineering to some extent.

Primarily we are exploring active galactic nuclei. Most of them we’ve discovered are called blazars. The most interesting find lately was a galaxy that has so much star formation and young stars blowing up that it is showing gamma rays. So that’s a brand new classification of a source type, now called starburst galaxies.

I’ve written some sky shows and children’s books. I’ve written for our web sites in the past. I find that because one of my roles here is to bring complicated subjects to the level of understanding of children and young adults, I think that you need to be able to express these complicated subjects in a less complicated way by using analogies and stories. Stories make things seem more immediate and more human. I think writing is very much the same as trying to express some of these complicated subjects in more of a palatable fashion for people.