Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011 - (Page 38)

Exploring Career Options Astronomer Marc Postman, PhD astronomer, Space Telescope Science institute Interview by Amy Entwisle With a bachelor’s degree in physics from MiT and both a master’s degree and Phd in astronomy from Harvard, you might expect that Marc Postman is a smart scientist, and you’d be right. But dr. Postman— whose research interests include the formation and evolution of large-scale structures in the universe— was once a young boy with a small telescope and a dream. Today, he still gets excited when he talks about space, a quality, he says, that’s as important as education if you’re considering a career in astronomy. How did you become interested in astronomy? I was in elementary school during the Apollo moon missions, which got me thinking about space exploration. I was also interested in science fiction, things like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek. I never wanted to be an astronaut, though. I was more interested in the science. In New York City, where I grew up, we didn’t have the world’s darkest skies, but my parents bought me a little telescope. I could see the brighter planets, which was pretty cool. They also took me to see shows at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. are, what the shapes of galaxies look like, and so forth. I also write proposals seeking time on telescopes, hire post-docs to work with me, and attend scientific meetings. A career in astronomy entails a fair amount of travel. In high school, we toured Brookhaven National Labs, and the physicist giving the tour had a United Airlines ticket in his front pocket. I remember him saying, “If you want to be a scientist, you have to like to travel.” I didn’t understand why he thought that was the most important advice he could give, but now I appreciate what he meant. If you’re an observer, you’ll travel to observatories in various locations across the earth. There are also a couple of scientific meetings each year, as well as smaller collaboration meetings. The places you get to see are pretty exciting, though. Many observatories are in rather exotic locations, such as Chile and Hawaii, and scientific meetings are often in Europe, Australia, South America, and Asia. How did you come to be interested in telescopes specifically? In general, there are two kinds of astronomers: those who do observations and those who think about theoretical implications and make predictions about what the observer should see. I wanted to be the observational kind of astronomer. If you’re an observer, your world revolves around using telescopes. Early in my career, I was content to use existing telescopes, but whenever a new capability came online, I became aware of how much of a difference that made. For example, when Hubble launched (once the problem with the mirror was fixed), it was amazing how much better the images from space were than those obtained with anything else we’d ever built. When the Keck Telescope in Hawaii was commissioned in the mid-’90s, we were able to accomplish in one hour what had taken us several nights on the next-largest telescope. What do you find most rewarding about your work? The coolest thing is learning something new about the universe, whether it’s being the first person to see an image from a new telescope or discovering some interesting correlation between the properties of galaxies that teaches us how they form and evolve. The public outreach part of the job is also extremely rewarding. Every time I tell someone what I do, they’re very excited. They say, “That’s really cool. What have you learned? What do you see?” Everyone—from kids to adults—seems to have a fascination with this career. What’s a typical day like for you? I spend about a third of my time doing research. Currently I’m working with data from the Hubble telescope. The data is sent to my computer, and I use software to bring up images from the telescope. I run other software to extract information about what’s in the image, what the properties Is there a particular moment in your career that stands out in your memory? When we first got the image of the Hubble Deep Field, and I realized that we were seeing galaxies that were so far away and that there were so many of them, I knew it was going to be very exciting to understand how all that 38 imagine Sept/Oct 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Physics Is…
Making the Team
Nuclear by Nature
Physics: The Next Generation
Telescopic Views
Exploring the Mysterious Lives of Stars
Around the Universe in Three Weeks
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Book Buddies
Meeting the (Economics) Challenge
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011