An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either observational or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, solar astronomy, the origin or evolution of stars, or the formation of galaxies. A related but distinct subject is physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to space science:
Sandra Moore Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
George Ogden Abell was an American educator. Teaching at UCLA, priorly he worked as a research astronomer, administrator, as a popularizer of science and of education, and as a skeptic. He earned his B.S. in 1951, his M.S. in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1957, all from the California Institute of Technology. He was a Ph.D. student under Donald Osterbrock. His astronomical career began as a tour guide at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Abell made great contributions to astronomical knowledge which resulted from his work during and after the National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, especially concerning clusters of galaxies and planetary nebulae. A galaxy, an asteroid, a periodic comet, and an observatory are all named in his honor. His teaching career extended beyond the campus of UCLA to the high school student oriented Summer Science Program, and educational television. He not only taught about science but also about what is not science. He was an originating member of the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Rashid Alievich Sunyaev is a German, Soviet, and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his MS degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1966. He became a professor at MIPT in 1974. Sunyaev was the head of the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been chief scientist of the Academy's Space Research Institute since 1992. He has also been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany since 1996, and Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2010.
Observational cosmology is the study of the structure, the evolution and the origin of the universe through observation, using instruments such as telescopes and cosmic ray detectors.
Jeremiah Paul "Jerry" Ostriker is an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and is the Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus at Princeton where he also continues as a senior research scholar. Ostriker has also served as a university administrator as Provost of Princeton University.
Phillip James Edwin Peebles is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation.
Richard Salisbury Ellis is Professor of Astrophysics at the University College London. He previously served as the Steele Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He was awarded the 2011 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, in 2022 the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and in 2023 the Gruber Prize in Cosmology.
Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.
Marc Davis is an American professor of astronomy and physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Davis received his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, his Ph.D from Princeton University in 1973 and has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences (1991) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992). He taught for a year at Princeton, 1973–74, then was on the astronomy faculty at Harvard from 1975 to 1981. Since 1981, he has been on the faculty of the Department of Astronomy and Physics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Peter Goldreich is an American astrophysicist whose research focuses on celestial mechanics, planetary rings, helioseismology and neutron stars. He is the Lee DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics at California Institute of Technology. Since 2005 he has also been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Asteroid 3805 Goldreich is named after him.
Robert P. Kirshner is an American astronomer, Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Clownes Research Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of supernovae to measure the expansion of the universe.
Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He was a postdoctoral Miller Fellow at Berkeley from 1984 to 1986 and was appointed to Berkeley's faculty in 1986. In 1996 and 2005, he a Miller Research Professor, and he is currently a Senior Miller Fellow. His research focuses on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths, as well as on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the expansion of the Universe.
Charles C. Steidel is an American astronomer, and Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Astronomy at California Institute of Technology.
Uroš Seljak is a Slovenian cosmologist and a professor of astronomy and physics at University of California, Berkeley. He is particularly well-known for his research in cosmology and approximate Bayesian statistical methods.
Stanislav George Djorgovski is an American scientist and scholar. He obtained his B.A. in astrophysics in 1979 at the University of Belgrade. After receiving his PhD in astronomy from U.C. Berkeley in 1985, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow until 1987 when he joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where he is currently a professor of astronomy and data science.
Christopher David Impey is a British astronomer, educator, and author. He has been a faculty member at the University of Arizona since 1986. Impey has done research on observational cosmology, in particular low surface brightness galaxies, the intergalactic medium, and surveys of active galaxies and quasars. As an educator, he has pioneered the use of instructional technology for teaching science to undergraduate non-science majors. He has written many technical articles and a series of popular science books including The Living Cosmos, How It Began, How It Ends: From You to the Universe, Dreams of Other Worlds, and Humble Before the Void. He served as Vice-President of the American Astronomical Society, he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He serves on the Advisory Council of METI.
Christopher Michael Hirata is an American cosmologist and astrophysicist.
Barbara Sue Ryden is an American astrophysicist who is a Professor of Astronomy at Ohio State University. Her research considers the formation, shape and structure of galaxies. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016.
