This week’s interview is with Avi Shporer.
Jessica Barton: What is your job title?
Avi Shporer: Post-doctoral fellow
JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?
AS: I’m involved in science - mainly transiting planets. I work with the Kepler and the HATNet teams. Our goal with Kepler is to study over 160,000 stars and measure the frequency of planets in the habitable zones of stars like our Sun. The quality of the data coming from Kepler is so high, since it’s a space telescope, that our understanding of all kinds of effects is growing because the noise on our measurements is so low. One new thing we have been able to measure with Kepler data is something called the beaming effect or relativistic beaming. Basically, because of relativity, a star will appear to have a slightly higher brightness when it is moving towards us, than when it is traveling away from us. We can measure this effect in binary systems, and even some planetary systems if there is a massive planet orbiting relatively close to its star.
JB: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself - your education, interests, past work experiences.
AS: I’ve been interested in astronomy since forever. I got my undergraduate degree in physics and computer science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Then I completed my army service, and went on to get my masters and PhD in astronomy, studying exoplanets, at Tel Aviv University.
JB: What led you to the career/job you are doing now?
AS: After finishing my PhD I had a couple of options but I couldn’t pass up the chance to work with Kepler and Tim Brown in beautiful Santa Barbara, so I was very pleased to be able to come work at LCOGT.
JB: What is a typical day at work like?
AS: There are no typical days, it really just depends what you are doing and what is going on. Most mornings start with checking email and that usually sets the course for the day. Right now I (or my computer actually) am analyzing some data that just came in from Kepler. Good days end at the gym.
JB: What advice would you offer people wanting to go into the type of work you do?
AS: Start early! These days you can use the Internet to learn so much about astronomy. You don’t even need to read all the papers, you can read press releases and blogs and learn lots. Take advantage of educational opportunities and things like observatory open days, and any university that offers physics will probably offer undergraduate astronomy courses.
JB: Is there anything I didn’t ask you would like readers to know?
AS: One of the most exciting things to me about astronomy is how fast observational astronomy is advancing. 20 years ago extrasolar planets hadn’t even been discovered yet! The discoveries we are making in astronomy right now are changing our theoretical understanding. For example, we used to think (naively) that most planetary systems would be like ours, with small rocky planets near the star, and larger gas giants further out. We now know that many planetary systems are very different from ours, many with hot gas giants orbiting very close to their stars, and some with such elliptical orbits, that we don’t fully understand how they could have ended up like that. This science is definitely being led by observations.
JB: Thanks Avi!