So over the years, I stargazed, and I read books about astronomy and about stars. I soon figured out that physics held the key to understanding stars, so I took all the math and science I could in school, and I majored in physics in college. I went to graduate school to study astronomy, and in 1989, at the tender age of 35, I received my PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Ever since then, I have worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

I actually work for a corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, which contracts to operate spacecraft. My particular job is in Science Operations for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which is run by the Space Telescope Science Institute. My corporation allows its workers to conduct research if they can get grants to cover their time. A couple of years ago, I was lucky in the research proposals I submitted with my mentor, Al Schultz, and this year I have been able to buy half of my work time back from the company, so I am able to spend time on my science projects.

The HST is a telescope on a spacecraft in low earth orbit (average altitude about 600 kilometers). It is used by astronomers all over the world to study all sorts of objects, from Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and comets in our solar system to galaxies and quasi-stellar objects at the farthest reaches of the universe. The telescope operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year. My "day job", the job I do for Science Operations involves processing all the science observations that the telescope makes; it is exacting and demanding work, and I'll talk about it later.

My "night job" is my research. Scientific research is the task of pulling out tiny bits of information about the world, figuring them out, and then fitting them back into the big picture of how the world works. I use the HST to study disks around other stars, and to search for brown dwarfs in nearby stellar systems. These studies have a place in the big picture of how planetary systems develop and how stars form. The tiny bits are the individual images and spectra that I've taken with the telescope, each requiring weeks of study to extract the information I'm looking for, and then more weeks to write up what I've learned, fit it back into the big picture, and submit it to a journal for other scientists to judge and to learn from.

Research is satisfying, because it lets me indulge my deep interest in stars, and it has given me a way to use the vast accumulation of knowledge from my "day job" for my own benefit. Research is frustrating, because it can take a very long time to get anything done. For example, my colleagues and I first got the idea to use HST to observe Wolf 424 early in 1994; we submitted an observing proposal in August of 1994, and we obtained the images of Wolf 424 in April of 1996. This week, May 1997, I am re-writing the paper about what we learned: our observation allowed us to make a new orbital fit for the binary pair, which gave us a new estimate for the mass of the component stars, which tells us that they both might be brown dwarfs!

In my "day job" I am part of a group of 11 astronomers and technicians, collectively called OPUS. We are responsible for processing all the science data and all the engineering telemetry from the HST spacecraft, and for verifying that there were no problems that might degrade the data. Science data include images (pictures) and spectra (detailed information about exactly how much energy is being output at different wavelengths; a rainbow is a type of spectrum). Engineering telemetry tells how the various mechanisms and computers are performing. "Processing" means taking the packets of 1's and 0's which are transmitted from the spacecraft and turning them into meaningful numbers: images, spectra, and time-series information on the state of the spacecraft. We also make sure that all the expected data was actually received, that everything onboard the spacecraft worked right during each observation, and that each observation was processed correctly. OPUS processed and verified more than 3600 science observations in March, 1997.

All this processing is done by a dozen networked computers running hundreds of interdependent computer programs. Most of my job for OPUS involves making sure that all this software works correctly, fixing problems that I can fix, and getting the software developers to fix problems that are beyond me. I have to understand how the computers work, how the network works, how the programs work, how the spacecraft works, how the telescope works, how each science instrument works, and how they all come together to make the final product. This is both frustrating and a whole lot of fun. If you miss one little bit of the big picture, your interpretation of what's going on can be vastly wrong; this means that I'm in a never-ending race to keep up with the constant changes and improvements and new features of the software and of the telescope and instruments. On the other hand, it's great fun and very satisfying to pull all the pieces together correctly and figure out a problem that no one else has been able to get a grip on.

The goal of OPUS is to make the software work sanely, so I get a lot of credit when I clearly delineate a problem, and even more credit when I can suggest a good fix. My fellow OPUS-ites are for the most part hard working, good natured, and supportive of each other: we can get the job done, and do it well, and have a good time in the process.

Ultimately, a good job is one that gives you joy, satisfaction, and a paycheck. I get joy from my study of stars, and from helping other astronomers get the most out of their data. I get credit for work well done, and I have good co-workers, which are both very satisfying. My pay is enough to take care of my family, with a little extra to visit my parents every few years. As jobs go, I'd have to say I have a good one.

There is a lot of talk these days about how scarce science jobs are. This is partially right: if you want to be a 100% research astronomer, you will have a hard time finding a position where you aren't scrabbling for grant money each year just to survive. I decided in college that I'd work as an astronomer as long as I could, and if the jobs dried up, I'd find something else and do my astronomy as an amateur. So far, I'm still bringing home a paycheck from a job where my title includes the word "Astronomer". That could change tomorrow, if a meteor knocks out the HST and puts me and my hundreds of co-workers out into the job market. But if I'd never tried, today I'd be spending my life bitter and envious of those who had.

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