Instructor Inspiration
We asked our SAO Instructors what inspired them to follow a career in astronomy. Here are their responses.
Karl Glazebrook
I had a long term interest in space and space flight (I was a boy astronaut) and read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke books (his fiction and non-fiction about the realities of exploring the solar system). From that I graduated to Patrick Moore (who also wrote some SF) and a more general interest in astronomy and then had a small telescope with which I looked at the Moon and planets - this was when I was about 10. I also read a LOT of SF as well as science books. My interests then changed more to high-end physics and I studied physics at University. I wanted to be a theoretical physicist dreaming up TOEs (Theory of Everything) but after a course in quantum field theory in my final undergraduate year I realised I wasn't smart enough for this! So I ended up doing a Ph.D. in astronomy as it seemed to offer the opportunity to travel to exotic places like Hawaii, Chile and Australia. Seems to have worked out...
Chris Fluke
My interest in space and astronomy began at an early age, and was a combination of a number of factors. Three particularly profound events stand out in my memory: Christmas 1978, when my parents gave me some toys from a little movie called "Star Wars"; Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" television series in the early 1980s; and a trip to the original H.V.McKay Planetarium at the Melbourne Museum a few years before the most recent return of Halley's Comet. It was this last event that made me realise you could get actually get paid for looking at the night sky! Add in "Doctor Who", "Battlestar Galactica "and various other science fiction television shows, "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy (in an increasing number of parts), visits to the Old Melbourne Observatory, early attempts at astrophotography with my father's SLR camera, writing simple astronomy programs on the family's TSR-80 colour computer, and a couple of research projects on "Mars" and "Saturn" at high school - and it was inevitable that I would go on to study...Software Engineering as part of a double degree at Melbourne University. After this brief detour, I returned my attention solely to Physics, completing my Honours year and PhD at the University of Melbourne (1999), before joining the new-born Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing at Swinburne University.
Carl Sagan with a model Viking lander in Death Valley, California. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
Chris Flynn
Favourite book: as a teenager, Freeman Dyson's books. Later at Princeton we had a few chats at lunch!
Favourite film: War of the Worlds (1953 version). Those spaceships! Those green rays! ALBUM: Bartok Concerto for Orchestra! Georg Solti!
How it all began: I was inspired to get into astronomy by talking by total accident while an undergraduate to a fellow at Bruce Hall (live-in college at ANU) who was a student at Mt Stromlo Observatory, found out that it was possible to be a professional astronomer, and that ANU had one of the best places in the business.
Alan Duffy
Alan Duffy (Credit: CAASTRO) | Growing up in a small country town in Northern Ireland meant I got great views of the night sky (although not as good as Down Under!) and even at a young age I would always ask what those points of light were. Together with early exposure to SciFi greats like Asimov & Clarke, scientists such as Hawking & Feynman and of course shows such as Star Trek & Doctor Who the list of amazing things (time travel, black holes, space travel, the list goes on) I would ask questions about just continued to grow. Asking questions is habit forming, and before I knew it, I was studying physics in Manchester asking questions about every topic I could take as a course. It was only when I was told that you could weigh some of the smallest particles in nature (neutrinos) with the positions of the biggest objects in the Universe (galaxies) that I found my way back to astronomy via a PhD in cosmology. It's still a dream to me that a job such as mine exists where I get to keep asking questions of the Universe and have the resources to get the answers. |
Jeremy Mould
Jeremy at the Cape with the shuttle Endeavour prior to STS-61.(Credit: J. Mould) | I became a space scientist in 1991 when I got a phone call from John Trauger of NASA JPL, asking me to join the WFPC2 camera team building the camera to fix the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror aberration. After Hubble Servicing Mission 1 (STS-61, now commemorated in an IMAX movie) over the following decade the team used WFPC2 to study everything from Saturn's aurora to the Eagle Nebula. Another team formed by myself and the late Marc Aaronson used WFPC2 to measure the Hubble Constant and the age of the Universe to 10% accuracy. |
Emma Ryan-Weber
Emma's daughter Claire viewing the transit of Venus, 2012. (Credit: E. Ryan-Weber) | As a ten year-old I was inspired by my Dad, he took me to our local Ballarat Observatory to see Halley's Comet in 1986. I then joined the Ballarat Astronomical Society and made a 10-cm Newtonian reflector. I still have this telescope and enthusiastically take it to Kindergartens and Schools to inspire the next generation. |
Prof. Darren Croton is a theoretical and numerical astrophysicist at Swinburne University's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. His research explores the forma\ tion and evolution of galaxies in the local and distant Universe, using both supercomputer simulations and large observational data sets. He founde\ d the Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory (TAO), an online virtual laboratory where astronomers can build and analyse their own virtual universes\ . A recent focus has been the "big data" challenges facing astronomy, brought about by the ever increasing sensitivity and size of the telescopes a\ nd supercomputers astronomers routinely use.
Giovanna Pugliese
I do not remember the first time I showed my interest in astronomy. According to my mother when I started school at 5 years old, I was already interested in whatever was shining there high in the sky, and at 9 years old I said to everybody that I wanted to study "like Galileo"! That was the beginning of the '80s, and it was difficult for many people to take seriously the plans of a such young girl. In that period, there were few women in astronomy. But astronomy was my passion, and step by step I carried on my dream and love for stars, making astronomy my profession. A profession which brought me around the world, and which allows me to learn new things, and meet interesting people day by day.
Terry received his PhD in astrophysics at Queen’s University in 1992, and then worked as a research astronomer at the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in\ Toulouse, the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge, and the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney and Siding Spring, Australia. In 2004, Terr\ y returned to Queen’s to teach physics and astronomy, and to continue his astronomical research. Around that time, he started teaching at SAO, and \ he is very happy to be returning. Terry also got a teaching degree and a second PhD in Education at Queen’s, and has taught high school science in \ Ontario and for a year in Istanbul. In the fall of 2016, Terry took up a continuing position in the Physics and Astronomy Dept at Okanagan College,\ in the southern interior of BC, Canada, where he teaches first and second year physics and astronomy courses. His research interests center around\ the use of globular clusters as probes of elliptical galaxies, and more recently he has become involved in research and outreach on Kuiper Belt Ob\ jects in the outer solar system (see tnorecon.net).
I have been interested in science since I was in middle school, but I can point to one specific moment that got me into astronomy. That was \ in high school when two astronomers came to my small town in northern Alberta with telescopes and a mobile planetarium. Once I saw Saturn through a\ telescope for the first time, and talked with the astronomers, I got hooked. I remember spending many nights that summer gazing up at the sky. I t\ hink I was also inspired by the dark skies and northern lights.