Meet the astronomers. See where they work. Know what they know.

The Project:

The Cosmic Diary is not just about astronomy. It's more about what it is like to be an astronomer.

The Cosmic Dairy aims to put a human face on astronomy: professional scientists will blog in text and images about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, their latest research findings and the challenges that face them. The bloggers represent a vibrant cross-section of female and male working astronomers from around the world, coming from five different continents. Outside the observatories, labs and offices they are musicians, mothers, photographers, athletes, amateur astronomers. At work, they are managers, observers, graduate students, grant proposers, instrument builders and data analysts.

Throughout this project, all the bloggers will be asked to explain one particular aspect of their work to the public. In a true exercise of science communication, these scientists will use easy-to-understand language to translate the nuts and bolts of their scientific research into a popular science article. This will be their challenge.

Task Group:

Mariana Barrosa (Portugal, ESO ePOD)
Nuno Marques (Portugal, Web Developer)
Lee Pullen (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
André Roquette (Portugal, ESO ePOD)

Jack Oughton (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
Alice Enevoldsen (USA, Pacific Science Center)
Alberto Krone Martins (Brazil, Uni. S. Paulo / Uni. Bordeaux)
Kevin Govender (South Africa, S. A. A. O.)
Avivah Yamani (Indonesia, Rigel Kentaurus)
Henri Boffin (Belgium, ESO ePOD)

Heidi Korhonen

37 years old, born in Finland
Place of work: European Southern Observatory (ESO) Munich, Germany & Cerro Paranal, Chile
Website: http://cosmicdiary.org/blogs/eso/heidi_korhonen/

The Sun may appear as a perfect sphere in the sky, but it actually has blemishes called sunspots. Their nature was a mystery until modern science was challenged to explain their nature and workings. Now, astronomers have a new task: determine whether other stars have the same phenomena!

Joana Ascenso

29 years old, born in Coimbra, Portugal
Place of work: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics / Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto
Website: http://cosmicdiary.org/blogs/joana_ascenso/

Stars are formed in large clouds of gas and dust that are scattered throughout the cosmos. But how much of this process do we really understand? Is it the same for all stars? Are they produced one at a time? Is there anything that still puzzles astronomers? Using state of the art observatories and venturing away from visible light wavelengths, all these questions and many more besides can now be answered.

Nadine Neumayer

32 years old, born in Germany
Place of work: European Southern Observatory (ESO), Munich, Germany
Website: http://cosmicdiary.org/blogs/eso/nadine_neumayer/

Few scientific topics capture people's imaginations as well as black holes. The mere mention is often enough to interest and captivate an audience. But how much do scientists actually know about these astronomical anomalies? How are they related to quasars, x-rays, and galaxies? And of course, if they swallow light, how can we see them? This article will help put many pieces of the puzzle together, resulting in a clear image explaining all about the nature of black holes.

Gayandhi de Silva

27 years old, born in Sri Lanka
Place of work: European Southern Observatory
Website: http://www.cosmicdiary.org/blogs/eso/gayandhi_silva/

Despite decades of study into galaxy formation, we still have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own Milky Way came to exist. Much detail on the physical scenarios is still missing and understanding it requires the joint effort of observations, theories, and complex numerical simulations. The newly developed technique of chemical tagging offers the possibility to reconstruct the original building blocks of our Galaxy, thereby providing an observational tool to develop the sequence of events that led to the Milky Way as we see today.

Salim Ansari

49 years old, born in Austria
Place of work: ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Website: http://cosmicdiary.org/blogs/esa/salim_ansari/

Why do we actually go into space? What is it that drives us towards putting up more and more satellites to observe the Universe, when at the same time we are building bigger and bigger telescopes on the ground? For the professional astronomer this is obvious. For the public at large, it isn't.