projects I do use a telescope for
just a few tens of hours, but then
there’s many months of trying to understand what it is exactly that we
found.”
Q:
With such a vast universe,
do astronomers simply
focus on a single question,
or are they multitaskers, seeking the
answers to multiple questions at
once?
Q:
Does working on a radio
telescope require a different skillset than an optical
telescope?
Lockman: “You need a broad
background in the physical sciences and mathematics, and above
all an interest in doing astronomical research. Anyone who is smart
astrophysicist is about the same
regardless of what instruments you
end up using. You do need to learn
a number of very specific instrumental techniques, or if you are
making theoretical calculations on
a computer, you would need to
learn some specialized numerical
techniques.”
Lockman: “Individual astrono-
mers tend to do research in just one
or two areas. I typically have several projects going at once, sometimes lasting several years. Between
the time that you devise an experiment, and the time that you actualy get to use a telescope may be
a year or more. So I’m really doing
multiple projects and I have collaborators scattered around the world
that are in complementary fields to
radio astronomy.”
“One thing I’m very interested in
is the extent of the Milky Way. How
far out does it really go? And what
is happening at the transition between galactic and intergalactic
space? We can study that using
radio waves. We can study that in
the ultraviolet using data from the
Hubble Space Telescope. We can
study that in the infrared using data
from other telescopes.
“If you go out on a clear night
what you will see is stars in the Milky
Way, our home galaxy. Stars like the
Sun put out most of their energy at
optical, visible, wavelengths. They
shine in the visible and we can see
that.
“In-between the stars, though,
there are clouds of dust and gas
that do not give off visible light, but
shine very brightly in radio waves.
And they can shine very brightly at
infrared wavelengths as well. So the
universe that we study with radio
waves, is very complementary to
the universe that we can study with
visible light.
“You need all of this to put together a coherent picture of what’s
going on. There are many things out
there that don’t give off any visible
light at all.”
www.RocketSTEM.org
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, located in West Virginia, is the one o