Name: Jennifer Wiseman
Code: 660
Title: Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope
How did you get started in astronomy?
I grew up in a rural area where being surrounded by nature was normal. I really loved wandering through forests, stomping around in streams, looking for wildlife and looking up at the sky at night. We lived out in the country where the sky was pretty dark, so I was able to see lots of stars, and I was fascinated by them. It also helped that when I was in school and growing up the Voyager space probes were first passing the outer planets of our solar system and sending back images of the moons of those planets, which I found to be absolutely fascinating.
What exactly does it mean to be the senior project scientist with Hubble?
My job description says something like, “make sure Hubble is as scientifically productive as possible.” With that I either panic or look around to the many, many people around me here at Goddard who are world class experts on science, engineering and management and get their input. I work with them to make sure that we as a team are making sure Hubble is as scientifically productive as possible.
That work takes on many facets including overseeing Hubble’s budget and working with an organization called the Space Telescope Science Institute, which helps us orchestrate Hubble’s science observations and coordinates planning with us for the best use of Hubble’s instruments. I think my favorite role though is reviewing the top science results that come from teams all over the world using Hubble and sharing and explaining them to the public through press releases, presentations and media interactions. So I get to be aware of the greatest science Hubble is being used for and then I give many talks about what we’re finding with Hubble. I’m basically a science spokesperson both within the agency and outside the agency.
Do you have a favorite Hubble image?
I wish I could say it was something exotic that almost no one has ever seen, but my favorite images are the deep fields and in particular the “Ultra-Deep Field.” The telescope was pointed in a direction of the sky where there were not many bright nearby stars so what shows up is a collection of thousands of little points and smudges of light, and actually these little lights are entire galaxies. So we can conclude that our universe is filled with billions of galaxies, and those galaxies can each have billions of stars, and if they are anything like the Milky Way then many if not most of those stars have planets! So our universe is incredibly overwhelmingly fantastic, and I get a new sense of that every time I look at the deep field.
Hubble and astrophysics deal with absolutely mind-boggling scales. How do you keep it all in perspective?
I don’t think it’s possible to really have a completely coherent perspective because our human experience is one of our local environment, so it’s hard to imagine the distances involved. Most of space is what we would call virtually empty, and the distances between visible sources are enormous; it is hard to maintain that perspective.
Many people will look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and think “we are so insignificant” because we’re on one little planet, around one little star, in the outskirts of one little galaxy and there are billions of other stars in the Milky Way and billions of other galaxies. That is all true, and we should have that sense of humility. But on the other hand, the fact that we on this little planet are able to recognize that we are on a planet in the solar system in a galaxy in a universe filled with galaxies and build instruments that can actually teach us more about these things and that we have the curiosity and capability to actually observe, learn and discern where we are in this vast universe, I think that speaks to a significance, not necessarily a significance on exactly where we are or our timespan but a significance in another kind of sense, and that is how I try to keep perspective.
Has your work with Hubble impacted your own perspective and beliefs?
I actually find our studies with science to be inspiring, by teaching us about the beauty of the universe and the way the fundamental forces of nature work together so well. I find that enriches my own personal faith. I think astronomy feeds the drive of the human spirit to learn who we are and how we fit into the bigger universe, and what it means to be human. This is a thirst all humans have that astronomy can help address in very satisfying ways.
You actually have a comet named after you: Comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff. How did that happen, and will you see it again?
The comet was a surprise discovery that happened when I was an undergraduate on a student field trip to Lowell Observatory in Arizona. I didn’t name it. It was named by the IAU’s Minor Planet Center. Astronomer Brian Skiff took the first images and I discovered the comet on the images. The good news is it has a very short period. It comes back every six and a half years and should be at its perihelion in early 2020 so we’re coming up on that time. The bad news is that it’s quite a dim comet so you have to have a professional quality telescope to have a chance of seeing it, but I hope that a bunch of comet experts will point their telescopes that way.
Now that you know what’s behind the sky, how has it changed your appreciation of it?
My favorite kind of astronomy is still personal viewing, when I can get away from the city to a dry place, a dark place, like a desert or somewhere like that where you can really see stars from horizon to horizon. That’s when I get the feeling of deep personal connection – I am looking up and seeing countless other stars that may have their own planets, and also even seeing other galaxies. That’s just incredible. I get a renewed sense of personal awe and wonder again when I can look up and just imagine where I am in this star system and how that relates to other stars and even other galaxies.
By Bradley Hague
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center