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Kewley Wins National Astronomy Award
IfA scientist Lisa J. Kewley has been awarded the 2005 Annie Jump Cannon
Award in Astronomy for her studies of oxygen in galaxies.
For most of us, oxygen is the gas that keeps us alive, but for Kewley,
oxygen is a tool for understanding the history of the Universe. "Oxygen
is manufactured inside stars and, once created, tends to stick around," said
Kewley, "so modern-day stars and galaxies contain more oxygen than
their predecessors did billions of years ago."
Kewley uses data obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, which
has the two largest (10-meter) optical/infrared telescopes in the world.
She focuses the Keck telescope on galaxies so distant that the light they
emit has been traveling through space for billions of years. From the spectrum
of each galaxy's light, Kewley can work out how much oxygen it contained
when it emitted the light. By comparing galaxies at different distances,
she has been able to sketch a broad history of the Universe. "It looks
like there was a burst of oxygen production during the first six billion
years of the Universe, and oxygen has been increasing steadily since then," she
said. "This means that oxygen atoms in your next breath could be anywhere
from five to twelve billion years old."
The Annie Jump Cannon Award is presented annually by the American Astronomical
Society for distinguished contributions to astronomy by a woman who received
her PhD within the last five years.
Born and raised in South Australia, Kewley received her PhD in 2002 from
the Australian National University and is currently a Hubble postdoctoral
fellow at IfA.
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~kewley/ |
