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Cosmic Diary - The life of an astronomer

Cosmic Diary - The life of an astronomer

The Cosmic Diary is one of eleven cornerstone projects that are taking place around the world during the International Year of Astronomy. Each cornerstone project is centred on a specific theme and the Cosmic Diary is all about what it is like to be an astronomer.

Professionals from five continents across the globe will contribute to the Cosmic Diary. They will blog in text and images about their life, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work. ESA scientists will be taking part and among those who will share their diaries in 2009 will be Detlef Koschny, Giuseppe Racca, Salim Ansari, Mark Kidger and Team INTEGRAL.

Detlef Koschny
Detlef is a family man with a passion for astronomy. His varied daily work includes being Study Scientist for the Marco Polo mission and for MoonNEXT, responsibility for archiving data from ESA's moon mission SMART-1, observing asteroids and meteor astronomy.

Giuseppe Racca
Giuseppe is Project Manager of the LISA Pathfinder Project: an experimental mission to demonstrate Einstein's geodesic motion in space. He has published 25 papers in refereed technical and scientific journals but still finds time to practise sports, in particular mountaineering.

Salim Ansari
Salim can speak six languages and has lived in many different locations around the world. He joined the European Space Agency in 1991 and now heads the IT, Communication and Education Service in the Science Directorate. To find out what this involves have a look at his Cosmic Diary blog.

Mark Kidger
The astronomy bug bit Mark when he was just five years old, as he gazed into the night sky with wonder. He is now part of the team currently preparing for the imminent launch of ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. Mark has appeared on the BBC’s ‘Sky at Night Programme’ four times and has been contributing to two popular astronomy magazines, Tribuna de Astronomia and The Astronomer, for many years.

Team Integral
Team INTEGRAL are making a unique contribution to the Cosmic Diary by being the first and only team to contribute as a unit. Each week, as part of their routine work a member of Team INTEGRAL takes on the role of Duty Scientist. Now they will take their turn to blog about themselves and their work on INTEGRAL.

Team INTEGRAL are, clockwise from back left. Dutch born Erik Kuulkers joined the INTEGRAL Team in 2002; his research includes studying nuclear explosions from binary systems containing neutron stars. Marion Cadolle Bel started at ESA as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in 2006 and examines multi-wavelength observations of accreting compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars.  In addition to the role of Duty Scientist, Canadian Guillaume Belanger, researches emissions from a region containing the highest concentration of molecules in the galaxy. Celia Sanchez-Fernandez joined the INTEGRAL team in 2005. Her current research includes the analysis of  INTEGRAL data to search for X-ray bursts, thermonuclear explosions on the surface of accreting neutron stars All members of Team INTEGRAL are based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) close to Madrid, Spain.

You can follow all their blogs on the Cosmic Diary web pages during 2009.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
28-Mar-2024 22:29 UT

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