Manuela Zoccali is an Italian astronomer who works in Chile as a professor of astrophysics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, and is the former director of the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics at the university. [1] Her research concerns the metallicity of stars, particularly those in the galactic bulge of the Milky Way, and the implications of these observations for the evolution of both individual stars and the formation of the bulge. Her research has suggested the independent formation of stars in the bulge, rather than migration of stars from the galactic disk to its bulge. [2]
Zoccali is originally from Reggio Calabria in southern Italy. [3] She was a student of astronomy at the University of Padua, where she earned a laurea in 1995, with undergraduate research on globular cluster NGC 1261, [1] and completed her Ph.D. in 2000. Her doctoral dissertation concerned low-mass stars, and was supervised by Giampaolo Piotto. [1] [4]
She became a postdoctoral researcher at the European Southern Observatory from 2000 to 2003, [1] during which she first visited Chile to help set up spectroscopy instrumentation at the Paranal Observatory. [3] Next, she won a joint fellowship of Princeton University and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, funding her for a continued year of postdoctoral research through both universities. [1] [3] After starting a family in Chile, [3] in 2004 she joined the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and full professor in 2016. [1]
She was the director of the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics from 2016 to 2019, and continues as deputy director. [1]
Zoccali was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. [5]
The Galactic Center is the rotational center and the barycenter of the Milky Way. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center. The Galactic Center is approximately 8 kiloparsecs (26,000 ly) away from Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius, where the Milky Way appears brightest, visually close to the Butterfly Cluster (M6) or the star Shaula, south to the Pipe Nebula.
Andrea Mia Ghez is an American astrophysicist, Nobel laureate, and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Annette Mairi Nelson Ferguson FRSE is a Scottish observational astrophysicist who specialises in the area of galaxy evolution. She is a professor at the Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh, and holds the Personal Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh.
Donald Edward Osterbrock was an American astronomer, best known for his work on star formation and on the history of astronomy.
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
Amy J. Barger is an American astronomer and Henrietta Leavitt Professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is considered a pioneer in combining data from multiple telescopes to monitor multiple wavelengths and in discovering distant galaxies and supermassive black holes, which are outside of the visible spectrum. Barger is an active member of the International Astronomical Union.
Patrick Thaddeus was an American professor and finished his career as the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy Emeritus at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping carbon monoxide in the Milky Way galaxy and was responsible for the construction of the CfA 1.2 m Millimeter-Wave Telescope.
Constance "Connie" Mary Rockosi is a professor and former department chair in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in 2001 and helped design the camera for the telescope that was used as part of the initial Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). She also was in charge of the SDSS-III domain for the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) project and is the primary investigator on SEGUE-2. Her focuses involve the study of the Milky Way galaxy, with a focus on the evolution that it took to reach its current state.
Emily Levesque is an American astronomer, author, and associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. She is renowned for her work on massive stars and using these stars to investigate galaxy formation. She is also the author of three books, including the 2020 popular science book The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers.
Nia Imara is an American astrophysicist, artist, and activist. Imara's scientific work deals with galactic mass, star formation, and exoplanet detection. Imara was the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley and was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Future Faculty Leaders program at Harvard University. In 2020, Imara joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy. Her recent work includes 3D-printing models to aid visualization of molecular clouds.
Amina Helmi is an Argentine astronomer and professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Johanna Sofia Nikolina Feltzing is a Swedish astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at Lund University since 2011. She completed her PhD at Uppsala University in 1996, publishing a dissertation about the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. Feltzing was the first woman to complete a PhD in astronomy at Uppsala, and the tenth in Sweden. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge at Cambridge University from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, she moved to Lund Observatory.
Paula Jofré is a Chilean astronomer and astrophysicist. She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Next, 2019, for her work with British anthropologist Robert Foley resulting to their collaboration about how "stars birthed in particular parts of the universe could be elementally related because they condense out of the same interstellar clouds" and "pass on their chemistry, much like parents pass along parts of their DNA to their children."
Ann I. Zabludoff is an American astronomer and astrophysicist whose research has included galaxy clusters and the effects of galactic environments on star formation, and the use of gravitational lenses to study the formation and interaction of the earliest galaxies, including observations with the Magellan Telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope. She is a professor of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology at the University of Arizona.
Paola Caselli is an Italian astronomer and astrochemist known for her research on molecular clouds, star formation and planet formation, and the astrochemistry behind the materials found within the Solar System. She is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics near Munich in Germany. She also holds an honorary professorship at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Dante Minniti is an astronomer born in Santa Fe, Argentina on December 1, 1962. He has devoted his career to the study of stellar populations, stellar evolution, globular clusters, galaxy formation, gravitational microlensing, exoplanets and astrobiology. He has been member of the SuperMACHO Team since 2001 and leader of the VVV Survey along with Phil Lucas since 2006 and of its extended version, the VVVX Survey. He has also fostered new scientists, supervising 14 PhD students, 11 Master Students and 17 Postdocs. He is Full Professor and Director of the Astronomy Institute at Andrés Bello National University (UNAB), Chile.
Ata Sarajedini is an astrophysicist, professional astronomer, academic, author, and podcaster. He is the Bjorn Lamborn Endowed Chair and Professor in Astrophysics at Florida Atlantic University.
Karin Lind is a Swedish astronomer whose research involves spectroscopy of stars in order to determine their chemical composition, and the use of this information to understand the origin of heavy elements in supernova explosions and the way radiation and energy moves through stellar atmospheres. Her work has in particular clarified the roles of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and supernovas in producing the quantities of lithium observed in early stars. She is an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University, and a participant and survey builder in the GALAH collaboration, which uses the Anglo-Australian Telescope's HERMES instrument to map the chemical compositions of stars in the Milky Way.
Snežana Stanimirović ia a Serbian-American radio astronomer whose research focuses on the interstellar medium and intergalactic medium, including neutral hydrogen clouds and the production of cosmic dust by supernovae. She is a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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