Carie Cardamone

Carie Cardamone is a graduate student in Astronomy at Yale University currently finishing up her PhD thesis. Her research focuses on the properties of distant Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and their host galaxies. By studying these objects she intends to further our understanding of how the growth of galaxies is tied to the growth of their central black holes. Her most recent paper, “Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: Discovery of A Class of Compact Extremely Star-Forming Galaxies,” focuses on an exciting result from the Galaxy Zoo project. (You can read about the writing of this paper in Carie’s blog post: The Story of the Peas; and check out Carie’s other blog posts by clicking on the “Carie” category to the right)

Originally from Rochester, NY, Carie attended Wellesley Financial Trading School (where she graduate with a double major in Mathematics and Astronomy), and obtained a Masters degree in Astronomy from Wesleyan University before starting her current PhD program at Yale. As an undergraduate Carie participated in several astronomy research projects. These projects include studying the small moons of Saturn, searching for extra-solar planets and studying the million degree gas around hot stars. Carie’s masters thesis at Wesleyan University, with Ed Moran, used local dust-obscured AGN to understand the properties of distant AGN. For her PhD thesis, Carie is working with Pieter van Dokkum and Meg Urry directly studying the build up of distant galaxies and AGN in a deep multi-wavelength survey. She also enjoys studying the Peas, an exciting new class of extreme star forming galaxies, first identified by Galaxy Zoo volunteers. Carie’s paper on the peas was recently accepted, and appears this morning on the open access e-print ArXiV as astroph/0907.4155

Carie has 2 cats Chandra & Swift, both of whom are named after high energy X-ray Satellites (The Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission). Her family is still in Upstate New York, where she often visits the family dogs Einstein, named after the Einstein Observatory also known as HEAO-2 (High Energy Astrophysics Observatory 2), and Newton, named after the European X-ray satellite XMM-Newton. In her spare time she enjoys reading literature, playing board games and watching old movies. She also enjoys volunteering at the local planetarium & observatory at Yale University.

• How did you first hear about Galaxy Zoo?

Kevin Schawinski, one of the Principal Investigators of Galaxy Zoo, had just arrived at Yale University, and was eager to start up collaborations with those of us working here. He was excited about the Galaxy Zoo users’ discovery of the Peas and told me about the project. The Peas were compact emission line galaxies that appeared green in the three-color SDSS images. At this point it was unclear whether the emission lines were caused by episodes of star formation or if these galaxies harbored Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). My own area of research focused on star formation in galaxies hosting AGN, so I was very excited by this new class of galaxies. I’d long been involved in public outreach, talking to local school groups and visitors to the Yale Observatory and Planetarium, so the idea of collaborating with citizen scientists was also quite attractive. I started the project last July and it’s been a wonderful experience working with the public overall and the galaxy zoo science team which have been so helpful.

• What has been your main involvement in the Galaxy Zoo project?

My main involvement thus far has been following up on the Peas. I worked with the Galaxy Zoo volunteers who actively searched for these objects and we were able to take a closer look at their spectral properties. Many of the scientists involved on the GZ team helped me with this analysis, and we were able to determine that the nature of these galaxies was largely star forming. In fact, the Peas are extreme examples of compact star forming galaxies, undergoing processes very similar to those seen in galaxies in the early universe. This is particularly exciting, because if we want to better understand how galaxies form and evolve over cosmic time, we need to understand how they grew at the earliest times.

The Peas are much closer to us, and can be studied in far greater detail than galaxies in the very early universe and therefore provide a ‘local laboratory’ in which we can study extreme star formation episodes in galaxies.

• How/when did you first get interested in Astronomy?

In college, we were required to take a science class to fulfill a distribution requirement. I chose astronomy because I thought it might be fun, and we wouldn’t be required to handle chemicals. I tend to spill things! I was blown away by how much I loved Astronomy. I studied planets and archeoastronomy (the history of human understanding of astronomy) but when we got to Cosmology, learning about the history of the universe, I was fascinated by how our understanding of the universe is growing and changing as new discoveries are uncovered each year. I finished with the mathematics major and a liberal arts study of astronomy, continued on to Wesleyan University to earn a masters in astronomy, and then to Yale, where I am currently finishing up my PhD.

• What (if any) do you think are the main barriers to women’s involvement in Astronomy?

I’ve never personally felt any discrimination as a female Astronomer. Although I have seen such things in academia, astronomers work in an enormously supportive environment. In my opinion, there are two barriers to a woman becoming an astrophysicist.

The first is very simple: it may never occur to her to study Astronomy. She has to chose take the coursework and show the initiative. I think once a woman has indicated interest in becoming an astronomer, the outpouring of support is overwhelming.
At Wellesley college, I had the encouragement of my professors and other alumnae in the field of Astronomy who were happy to share their experiences with me. I’ve experienced the same encouragement and support at Wesleyan and at Yale. There is never any question that a woman’s work is held in equal regard to that of her male peers.

The second barrier to a woman becoming an astrophysicist comes much later as she is finishing up graduate school and starting her career. An astronomer must spend much of her 20s and 30s moving from institution to institution, completing a graduate degree and a couple of postdoctoral positions before finding a permanent position. If you’re married and thinking about starting a family, it can be very difficult to be this mobile. Additionally, there are numerous problems to consider if both partners are academics, a common situation for female astronomers.

• Do you have any particular role models in Astronomy?

I have numerous role models in Astronomy. Currently I work with Meg Urry who is a wonderfully supportive advisor and an outstanding example of what a woman can achieve in the field of astronomy. I also admire others here at Yale including Priya Natarajan, a innovative scientist who studies cosmology and a gifted mentor in her own right. Ed Moran, with whom I worked at Wesleyan University, is also a talented teacher and scientist who comes up with new and creative ways to approach scientific questions.

• What do you think is the most interesting astronomical question Galaxy Zoo will help to solve?

Galaxy Zoo will be able to shed new light on the role galaxy morphology, or shape, plays in galaxy evolution. Also, the attention to detail a million amateur astronomers can pay allows them to uncover new and curious objects like the ‘Peas’. Who knows what else might be uncovered by these dedicated volunteers!

This post is part of the ongoing She’s an Astronomer series on the Galaxy Zoo Blog is support of the IYA2009 cornerstone project of the same name (She’s an Astronomer). We are now listed on the She’s an Astronomer website in their Profiles.

This is the fourth post of the series. So far we have interviewed

• May 1st 2009: Hanny Van Arkel (Galaxy Zoo volunteer and finder of Hanny’s Voorwerp).
• June 1st 2009: Dr. Vardha Nicola Bennert (researcher at UCSB involved in Hanny’s Voorwerp followup and the “peas” project)
• July 1st 2009: Alice Sheppard (Galaxy Zoo volunteer and forum moderator)

Still to come in the series – more Galaxy Zoo volunteers and researchers, including original team member Dr. Kate Land, forum moderator Gemma Coughlin and many others.

Alice Sheppard has had various jobs in administration, environment, teaching and writing whenever she can – but as soon as she started moderating the Galaxy Zoo Forum nearly 2 years ago, she knew that this was her real work. She’d been hooked on astronomy and science since she was very young, but the presentation of these subjects at school didn’t encourage her to think she’d ever really get involved. She studied Environmental Science at university in Norwich and Granada, Spain, and became increasingly interested in informing and involving the public. She now lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with her family and two cats who also contributed to scientific research for April Fool’s Day! Her involvement in the Galaxy Zoo project inspired her to start an Open University course and her current goal is to continue the work she has begun informally in the Galaxy Zoo project as a science communicator and educator. You can catch up more with Alice on her blog: Alice in Galaxyland, and she invites you to join her any time for virtual coffee and galaxy conversations in the forum.

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Vardha Nicola Bennert by the ocean in Santa Barbara (a 5 minute walk from her office at UCSB), May 2009.

Dr. Vardha Nicola Bennert is a postdoctoral researcher (“postdoc”) in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of California (UC) in Santa Barbara.  Originally from the Ruhr area in Germany, she completed her PhD in 2005 on the astrophysics of active galaxies at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. She then moved to the US for a first postdoc at UC in Riverside, before moving to Santa Barbara in 2008.

Dr. Bennert’s research interests focus on the central region of “active galaxies” (the black hole and the so-called narrow- and broad-line regions immediately around the black hole) and its relation to the host galaxy. She enjoys working in the stimulating research environment at UCSB and living in Santa Barbara – especially because the sun is always shining and the beach is so close! But she also misses her friends and family in Germany. In her free time, she loves to explore the outdoors of southern California, and is also on an inward journey, integrating meditation into her everyday life.

• How did you first hear about Galaxy Zoo?

By coincidence! I was at UC Riverside and had an upcoming observing run at the 3m Shane telescope at Lick observatory when Prof. Bill Keel contacted my supervisor, Prof. Gabriela Canalizo, asking whether we could get a spectrum of “Hanny’s Voorwerp”. I agreed, went observing, had several clear nights and was able to get the spectrum. I was immediately intrigued by the object as the spectrum looked very familiar to me – very much like the narrow-line regions of active galaxies that I studied intensively during my PhD thesis, except that there was no evidence of an active galactic nucleus in the center!

• What has been your main involvement in the Galaxy Zoo project?

I helped in the reduction, analysis, and interpretation of the  spectroscopic data which were integrated in the discovery paper of the Voorwerp. Later, by another coincidence, the team was looking for someone with experience in reducing HST images, which I have. So I obtained, reduced and analyzed HST images of the “peas” discovered in the Galaxy Zoo project. This formed part of another paper in which I helped in the interpretation of the results.

• What do you like most about being involved in Galaxy Zoo?

It is great that so many citizen astronomers are involved, and that it has such a strong public outreach component. For me, public outreach is not only our duty as researchers who are basically funded through the tax payers’ money but something that I enjoy a lot. I love seeing how people get excited about astronomy and the research that I am doing.

• What do you think is the most interesting astronomical question Galaxy Zoo will help to solve?

Galaxy Zoo has proved its value in revealing rare and interesting objects like the Voorwerp, through inspection of images by eye, showing the great advantage of  humans over robots! I think this, more than answering a particular question for which Galaxy Zoo was set up, will be the lasting legacy. These rare objects have the potential to provide us with new and surprising insights.

• How/when did you first get interested in Astronomy?

As a child, I loved looking at the stars, and was fascinated by the books by Prof. Stephen W. Hawking, although I did not understand much at the time… However, this did not turn me off from pursuing a scientific career. On the contrary, I always found it exciting to be at the edge of my understanding and learn new things all the time.

• What (if any) do you think are the main barriers to women’s involvement in Astronomy?

I do not like the very competitive way in which scientific results are promoted. Personally, I think that it must be difficult for women to have children while pursuing an astronomical career, since both tasks are quite time demanding. But of course, there are many women in astronomy who prove that it is possible.

• Do you have any particular role models in Astronomy?

My PhD advisor, Prof. Hartmut Schulz, had a strong influence on me. I always considered him to be one of those “old-fashioned” professors who not only know so much about astronomy, but who have a profound general education with the emphasis on thinking for one’s own. Prof. Schulz sadly died in August 2003. I remember him gratefully for having been my “Doktorvater” in the truest sense of the word.

Also, my current supervisor at UCSB, Prof. Tommaso Treu, is a constant inspiration – he is not only very smart and extremely effective, but he is also always joyful, full of energy, and helps his students to make the best out of their potential.

This post is part of the ongoing She’s an Astronomer series on the Galaxy Zoo Blog in support of the IYA2009 cornerstone project of the same name (She’s an Astronomer).

This is the second post of the series, last month we interviewed Hanny Van Arkel (Galaxy Zoo volunteer and finder of Hanny’s Voorwerp).

Next in the series: Alice Sheppard (forum moderator).

Hanny’s interview in het Nederlands

Hanny van Arkel is a 25 year old teacher, who lives in the South East of the Netherlands with her German Shepherd, Janey. She plays guitar and at the moment she teaches music in a primary school in Heerlen, where she also works on science boxes (boxes of science experiments for kids) and is a general stand-in. Hanny discovered what is now known as “Hanny’s Voorwerp” while classifying galaxies on Galaxy Zoo, back in 2007. She writes about her adventures since then on www.hannysvoorwerp.com. (Picture Credit: H. van Arkel)

• How did you first hear about Galaxy Zoo?

I have a passion for music and play guitar myself. Brian May (Queen’s guitarist) is one of the people I admire for his music and for what he writes on his website, www.brianmay.com. When the project had just started, Brian wrote about it there, saying you could help scientists by sorting through these beautiful pictures. So that’s when I thought to check it out.

• What has been your main involvement in the Galaxy Zoo project?

That would be discovering “Hanny’s Voorwerp” and everything that happened ever since. I still classify galaxies as well, but mostly I ‘spread the word’ by talking to the (international) media, I give lectures about the Voorwerp and Galaxy Zoo and I participate in events, for example.

• What do you like most about being involved in Galaxy Zoo?

One of the things I still like is the fact that people without a scientific background can actually contribute to real scientific research here. And personally I get a lot back from it as well and then I’m not even talking about all the fun stuff I get to do. I’ve learned a lot about astronomy in general and the English language for that matter and I met some of my best friends through the Galaxy Zoo meet-ups.

• What do you think is the most interesting astronomical question Galaxy Zoo will help to solve?

Well, besides what the investigations of “Hanny’s Voorwerp” will bring, I’m also very curious as to what the “peas” exactly are, to just name two I’m involved in. But it’s a hard question actually, as there are so many things to learn from this project and it’s such a success… who knows what we’ll find out in the future?!

• How/when did you first get interested in Astronomy?

I’ve always been eager to learn and I liked all the subjects in school. I never had ‘astronomy’ as a subject though, but I do remember a little project about it in my primary school. However, I had always appreciated the night sky, even though I don’t have a telescope or anything. What really got me interested was Galaxy Zoo, back in the summer of 2007.

• What (if any) do you think are the main barriers to women’s involvement in Astronomy?

Are there? I mean, I know that only approximately a quarter of all professional astronomers are woman, but I can’t think of something that would’ve stopped me to be honest.

• Do you have any particular role models in Astronomy?

Yes, I’ve met a lot of people the past two years, who I admire. First of all, the members of the Galaxy Zoo Team. Besides coming up with this great idea and obviously working hard for it, they make sure the volunteers feel a part of it all. They take time to explain things in an understandable way, for instance. I also have respect for everything Pamela Gay does, she’s a very good example of a successful woman in astronomy. Furthermore I did a lecture together with Cees de Jager (website in Dutch) once, and it was great to see someone being so devoted to astronomy as he was. Patrick Moore, obviously. And Brian May, for ‘going back to school’ after all those years. And I recently worked with a few people from ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) and thought the way Joeri van Leeuwen taught kids about pulsars was very inspiring. To name just a few.

Hanny’s interview in het Nederlands

As most of you are aware, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, and all sorts of projects have been launched to promote astronomy. One of the IYA2009 Cornerstone projects is She’s an Astronomer and its aim is to address the issues around gender imbalance in astronomy (only roughly 1/4 of professional astronomers are women) by promoting gender equality and empowering women.

At Galaxy Zoo we have decided to participate in the She’s an Astronomer project. Throughout 2009 we will be posting to the Galaxy Zoo blog profiles and interviews of women who have been involved in the Galaxy Zoo project (both as volunteers and as scientists). We hope you will enjoy reading about the wide variety of women who have been and continue to be involved in the Galaxy Zoo project.

The first post – about Hanny van Arkel will follow shortly.