Renowned astronomer, Andrea Ghez, made one of the most pioneering discoveries in astronomy – the existence of the biggest black hole in our cosmic neighborhood. Ghez proved that a 4.1-million-solar-mass lies at the center of the Milky Way. This work earned her a MacArthur 'genius' award in 2008, and half of the Crafoord prize, astronomy’s Nobel, in 2012.
Ghez recently spoke at the Moore Foundation to share more about her research on black holes and the stars that move around them. Ghez is a professor at UCLA, where she has access to the Keck Observatory – two telescopes that sit at the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. In her talk, Ghez celebrated the instruments that enable her to “address some of the biggest questions in the universe.” She describes her experience as an astronomer as being shaped by both patience and technology. Patience is required to collect the years of data necessary to begin to answer a question. And technology enabled Ghez, and her team, to measure the orbits of stars, which helped determine the mass and size of the object around which they were orbiting.
For over a decade, the Moore Foundation has been a part of the development of adaptive optics technology to be able to make clearer the images that are received by telescopes. The work done to develop this technology for the Keck Observatory will inform the adaptive optics to be used on the Thirty Meter Telescope, which will provide astronomers like Ghez a dramatically clearer and more nuanced view of the center of our galaxy. With support from the foundation, Ghez is currently working on the development of a state-of-the-art imager that will be installed on the Keck I’s OH Suppressing Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (OSIRIS). By installing this instrument, Ghez will be able to study the closest approach of the star SO-2 to the black hole at the center of our galaxy. This observation will allow astronomers to better understand how black holes interact with their environments, as well as provide the opportunity to test the theory of general relativity in ways that have not been possible before.
Read more about Andrea Ghez here.
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