In This Edition

Educational Initiatives and Infrastructure

Research Breakthroughs

Emily Levesque '06

Interview with:

Undergrad Discovers Three New Stars
Emily Levesque '06

Emily Levesque, from Taunton, Massachusetts, is a senior at MIT majoring in physics with an astrophysics concentration. She's also pursuing minors in astronomy and creative writing. After graduation, she plans to pursue a PhD in astrophysics. She also enjoys backpacking, rock climbing, creative writing, and playing the violin.

What was your astronomical discovery?

My collaborators and I discovered the largest normal stars in the universe, red supergiants that are about 1,500 times the size of our sun! This stemmed from research examining other physical traits of these stars, most importantly their temperature. Knowing more about the physical properties of the stars lets us learn more about how stars like this form, evolve, and eventually die the dramatic deaths that lead to the formation of compact objects like neutron stars and black holes.

What did your research entail?

I got involved with this research through the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz. The project began in May 2004 with an observing run at the Kitt Peak National Observatory 2.1-meter telescope south of Tucson, Ariz. I've also traveled to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory near La Serena, Chile, for this project and will be returning this December. Over the course of the summer, I worked with the data we had taken in May along with past data taken for the project, reducing and analyzing it and comparing our observations with models made by our collaborators to determine the stars' temperatures.

Near the end of the summer, we began preparing a paper for submission to The Astrophysical Journal. My research advisor, Dr. Phil Massey, thought that I should take first authorship on the paper, pointing out that I had participated in every aspect of the project and done much of the data reduction and analysis. Dr. Massey has been a fabulous advisor and mentor, and I've enjoyed working with him since that summer on continuations of the project.

What was the response to your work from the American Astronomical Society?

The presentation in January was my first trip to an American Astronomical Society meeting, and it was great—so many astronomy nerds in one place! It was fun to present our research and get lots of compliments, comments, and feedback from other scientists in the field. The media attention was pretty exciting, and I was pleased to see how much coverage an astronomy story was getting. The best part of it, to me, was the widespread appeal of the discovery and the thought that it might pique people's interest in astronomy.