Zooites at the recent Greenwich Meeting. Gemma is the furthest on the right (in the white t-shirt). Also pictured (from left to right) Hanny (profiled earlier this series), Edd, 'Blackprojects', Thomas J, Bill Keel, Waveney (Richard Procter), and Jules (who will be profiled later in the series).

Gemma Coughlin (better known as “fluffyporcupine“) has been one of the Galaxy Zoo forum moderators since last December when Chris asked her to help out with the ever growing forum. Gemma is a postgraduate student at Cambridge University, studying for a PhD in Engineering.  Her work aims to improve computer simulations of objects with complex geometries (for example simulations of cars moving through air) by trying to figure out a way to automate how the space is divided up into a mesh to put into the computer. This can have a significant effect on the result of the simulation, and is tricky and time consuming to do by hand.

Gemma is originally from Swansea in Wales, and did her undergraduate at Swansea University in Mechanical Engineering. Apart from stargazing, her main hobby is karate (she is a 1st Dan and has been Women’s captain at Cambridge). She also enjoys watching motorsort (mainly Formula 1) and Rugby (Cymru am byth!). Contrary to a popular theme on the forum (cats), she is very much a dog person and likes taking her dog for a walk on the beach when she goes home to Wales.

• How did you first hear about Galaxy Zoo?

I saw an article on the BBC news website, but the servers had already melted by the time I tried to sign up, so I registered a day or so after the  start.

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

I guess my main involvement has been as a chatter box on the forum! I classified a fairly large number of images on Zoo1, not quite so many on Zoo2 though. Other than that I have been a keen lens hunter (blog entry about lenses) and have helped with the peas. I am in the acknowledgments (along with the other members of the peas corps) for the Peas paper – I was the first person to point out that all the peas had a large OIII spike and that most seemed to be starforming galaxies or AGN.

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

The community without a doubt. I have learned so much from the forum – especially when one of those interesting/awkward images comes up to classify. Everyone is so patient and helpful (even if we disagree) and very free with a wealth of knowledge (and the beer at meet ups). Never thought I would meet so many kind and interesting people on the internet let alone for so many of them to become friends!

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

I think it will help greatly with Bill Keel’s study of dust in overlapping galaxies considering the number of times we’ve multiplied his sample size (from 20 to 1900 at last count)! I’d also like to add that I think the irregulars project (get involved here) is interesting as its entirely Zooites that are investigating them and they too are analysing a much larger sample size (N>9000) than previous studies (which has about 150, thanks for the numbers Alice!).

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

My dad showed me Saturn through a scope as a kid – that got me hooked. He still laughs at my reaction – the wow i can SEE the rings! (Editor’s note – Saturn really is impressive through a small telescope. Check out Sky and Telescope’s Guide to Saturn for some pictures, and if you’ve never seen it I really recommend you try!)

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

I guess it’s the same as with engineering, I don’t think maths and science are presented in an interesting way for girls at school and they are perceived as hard, rigid, dusty disciplines. I guess they are hard, but that makes it all the more special when you achieve something. I know it’s not for everyone, but if people could see more clearly at a young age how many cool things you can do with maths and science and the sense of achievement you get from problem solving, that they aren’t dry subjects that you learn by rote and that there are still many interesting things to discover, I’m sure a lot more people would be interested, be they women or men.

A friend and I  spent GCSE maths turning the more boring GCSE maths questions in to problems about racing cars and our favorite F1 drivers! My interest in engineering really started because I got drawn into (fast) cars and was fascinated by how they work and the engineering that goes into them to do what they do! For example, did you know that an F1 car can generate enough downforce to equal its weight, so it could theoretically drive on the ceiling in a tunnel!

• Do you have any particular role models in Astronomy?

I guess it has to be the Zookeepers! Not only for the way that came up with a way of answering the questions they were interested in, but for coping with the monster they have created in the Zoo! Can’t be an easy job keeping 200,000 people on your good side.

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 listed on the She’s an Astronomer website in their Profiles.

This is the fifth 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).
• July 27th 2009: Carie Cardamone (graduate student at Yale who lead the Peas paper).

Still to come in the series – more Galaxy Zoo volunteers and researchers, including our next interview which will be with original team member, Dr. Kate Land.

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.