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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
pread the astronomical bug through field t rips, leadingcampers into the woods tospot Halley’s comet or popping up with pinhole ameras for solar eclipses And at the Har vard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, hundreds of the field's brightest lights crowd the halls. At Penn State, in contrast, the entire department can fit around a good-size din ner table—yet each of its 10 faculty mem bers is pursuing a distinct path. Feigelson scans the skies for objects that emit X-rays or radio waves. Next door sits Associate Prof. Lawrence Ramsey, an opt ical ast rono mer—he works with visible light—whoquit a higher-paying but unfulfilling engineer ing job to study the stars. Prof. Gordon Garmire, respected internationally for his work with X-ray observation, won part of a coveted space X-ray telescope project for Penn State. Down the hall, Hungarian born Associate Prof. Peter Meszaros, a theo rist, wrestles with the inner workings of quasars—distant galaxies with massive black holes in their centers that emit many types of radiation—and plans experiments to test his ideas. All of the approaches are necessary since, as Feigelson says, "You can’t grab a star and poke it.” Quarter peaks: stargazers also hnd em ployment in the outside world; one-third of America’s astronomers work for the gov ernment, most of them within the system of federally funded national observatories. Others serve with the space program, ei ther with NASA or aerospace firms, or with computer consulting firms. "The skills you learn as an astronomer are remarkably portable,” says James Wertz, a former as t ronomer who heads a smal 1 aerospace con sulting firm. These posts often provide higher pay than schools, but can pose con flicts for scientists who must abandon pure research for narrow tasks or who deplore military uses of space such as Star Wars. There are even opportunities for an un trained but enthusiastic avocationist. Sev eral nights each month, for instance, Tony Hoffman sets up his $400 Japanese-made scope in Greenwich Village and invites pas sersby to gaze at Jupiter, Saturn and the moon—at 25 cents per squint. Hoffman took astronomy courses at the University of Michigan but didn’t major in it. By day, he works in magazine production After ' wo years of free-lancing, he says he has amassed enough quarters from his 50 or so nightly clients to pay for his instrument. Full-time astronomers, on the other mnd, are highly trained at the 67 degree . ranting programs in the United States, most often taking an undergraduate dec ree in physics topped off by an astronomy loctorate. Often academic astronomers must also master physics, computer sci ence and engineering. Because female and black students have not gravitated to these disciplines in huge numbers, astronomy C A KOI HERS SON Sky guide: Free lancer Hoffman ami young clients And there is the case of the Ad vanced X-ray Astrophysics Fa cility i AXAFi, a space telescope planned for the 1990b A major part of the multimillion-dollnr project, in which Penn State participates, was lost last Au gust when an off-course rocket had to bo destroyed; the culprit, a resistor like those sold for less than a dollar at Radio Shack, had been installed through a design error The loss and de lays mean harder times for space-based projects already squeezed by a cost-conscious Congress No time: Despite setbacks, as tronomers are generally pa tient—a quality that's helpful when you're sitting all night on mountaintops and dealing with infinite scales of time and space They persevere, though surely not for fame; the last astrono mer to become a household name. Kdmund Halley, diet! 244 years ago. They even stay on despite the fact that very few remains largely a fraternity of white males; there are fewer than 10 black as tronomers among the 3,500 in the United States, and only about 12 percent of the total are women As a career, astronomy has its share of. well, nebulous prospects. Long-term proj ects can suffer costly and time-consuming setbacks. The Challenger t/agedy and sub sequent shuttle delays have stymied those astronomers whodependon manned flights to carry their experimental equipment. outside the field seem to understand what they do: Andrew Young, a lecturer at San Diego State University recalls that soon after completing his dissertation, a woman at a party asked what he did for a living Proudly he declared, "lam an astronomer " At which the woman wrinkled her nose and said, "Yeah, I had an aunt who believed in that stuff once.” Even when you earn your living reaching for the stars, there's always someone to bring you down to eart h John Schwartz IJUK HK(MM;K0KA VKKIOMN i AMP4 ANNN Catch the wava: Penn State's Feigelson (right) and Ramsey uith imaging computer
