Natalie Batalha

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Natalie Batalha
Natalie Batalha.jpg
Natalie Batalha
Born (1966-05-14) May 14, 1966 (age 58)
California, U.S.
Alma mater UC Santa Cruz (Ph.D.)
University of California, Berkeley (S.B.)
Known for Kepler Mission
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Astronomy
Exoplanets
Institutions UC Santa Cruz

Natalie M. Batalha (born 1966) is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. Previously she was a research astronomer in the Space Sciences Division of NASA Ames Research Center and held the position of Science Team Lead (2010 - 2012), Mission Scientist (2012 - 2016), and Project Scientist (2016 - 2018) on the Kepler Mission, the first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars. [1] [2] [3] Before moving to NASA, Batalha was a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University (2002 - 2012).

Contents

Biography

Batalha grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended the University of California, Berkeley. [4] [5] Though she started out as a business major, she switched to physics after learning that everyday occurrences like thin-film interference (why rainbows appear on soap bubbles and oily puddles) could be described mathematically. During her undergraduate, she worked as a stellar spectroscopist, studying sun-like stars. After graduating with her bachelor's degree in physics, she pursued a doctorate in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [3] [2]

Batalha's daughter Natasha Batalha is also an astronomer. The two women are collaborating on projects that discover and describe exoplanets found using the James Webb Space Telescope. [6]

Career

In 1997, William Borucki added Batalha to the science team and she started work on transit photometry. She has been involved with the Kepler Mission since the design and funding, and as one of the original Co-Investigators was responsible for the selection of the more than 150,000 stars monitored by the telescope. She now works closely with team members at Ames Research Center to identify viable planets from the data of the Kepler mission. She led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of Kepler 10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside the Solar System. [3] [7]

In November 2017, the Space Telescope Science Institute selected 13 programs for Director's Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) on the James Webb Space Telescope. [8] [9] Of a total of 460 observation hours allocated, Batalha's project, 'The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program', was awarded 86.9 hours; the highest of any DD-ERS program on the JWST. [10] These observation hours are allocated to be used during the first five months of the telescope's operation.

Batalha leads the UC Santa Cruz Astrobiology Initiative, a collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe.

Following the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021, Batalha and a team of researchers found unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. [11] The team used JWST to observe a Saturn-mass planet called WASP-39b which orbits very close to a sun-like star about 700 light-years from Earth.

Batalha, along with Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division Director, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Steven L. Finkelstein, Professor of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics in 2022. [12]

Batalha and the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Early Release Science Team used the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023 to identify water vapor in the atmosphere of WASP-18b and make a temperature map of the planet as it slipped behind, and reappeared from, its star. [13]

Presentations

Batalha presented 'A Planet for Goldilocks' at Talks at Google in 2016. She presented 'From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds' at Breakthrough Initiatives in 2019. [14] [15]

Recognition

In 2011, Batalha was awarded NASA's Exceptional Public Service Medal for outstanding leadership of the Kepler Science Team.

In 2017, Batalha and two other exoplanet scientists were named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. [16] In the same year, Batalha won Smithsonian Magazine's American Ingenuity Award in Physical Sciences. [17]

In 2018, Batalha received the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement award. [18]

In 2019, Batalha earned an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. [19]

Batalha was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 [20] and a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020. [21]

In 2020, Batalha was appointed as a UC Presidential Chair for her work on the UCSC Astrobiology Initiative. [22]

Batalha has been awarded several named lectureships, including the James T. Bunyan Lecturer (2011, Stanford University), the Rittenhouse Lecturer (2015, University of Pennsylvania), the Walter Stibbs Lecturer (2016, University of Sydney), the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecturer (2017, New Zealand), the Carl Sagan Distinguished Lecturer (2018, Cornell University), the Celsius Lecturer, (2018, Uppsala University), the John N. Bahcall Distinguished Lecturer (2019, Space Telescope Science Institute), and the UCSC Faculty Research Lecturer (2024, University of California, Santa Cruz).

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Kepler space telescope is a defunct space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine and a half years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-7b</span> Planet orbiting Kepler-7

Kepler-7b is one of the first five exoplanets to be confirmed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed during the first 34 days of Kepler's science operations. It orbits a star slightly hotter and significantly larger than the Sun that is expected to soon reach the end of the main sequence. Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size; at the time of its discovery, Kepler-7b was the second most diffuse planet known, surpassed only by WASP-17b. It orbits its host star every five days at a distance of approximately 0.06 AU. Kepler-7b was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 4, 2010. It is the first extrasolar planet to have a crude map of cloud coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-22b</span> Super-Earth exoplanet orbiting Kepler-22

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Kaltenegger</span> Austrian astronomer

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">William J. Borucki</span> NASA Kepler planet discovery mission principal investigator

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-62f</span> Super-Earth orbiting Kepler-62

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-438b</span> Super-Earth orbiting Kepler-438

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-452b</span> Super-Earth exoplanet orbiting Kepler452

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Ballard</span> American astronomer

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-1229b</span> Super-Earth orbiting Kepler-1229

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisa Quintana</span> American astronomer

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References

  1. ↑ "Mission Scientist: Natalie Batalha". NASA. 2012-03-12. Archived from the original on September 15, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Natalie Batalha". Space Science and Astrobiology at Ames. NASA. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 "Natalie Batalha". Kepler. NASA: Ames Research Center. Archived from the original on September 21, 2015.PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  4. ↑ Wolchover, Natalie (2021-12-03). "The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  5. ↑ Ferris, Timothy; Archibald, Timothy. "Meet Natalie Batalha, the Explorer Who's Searching for Planets Across the Universe". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  6. ↑ Chen, Sophia (2023). "Mother–daughter duo work together to find new worlds". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00580-6. PMID   36849819.
  7. ↑ Lemonick, Michael D (2012). Mirror Earth : the search for our planet's twin . New York: Walker. ISBN   978-0-8027-7900-7. LCCN   2012009787. OCLC   879630400. OL   25298995M.
  8. ↑ "Selections Made for the JWST Director's Discretionary Early Release Science Program". wayback.archive-it.org. Archived from the original on 2018-08-08. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  9. ↑ "DD-ERS". STScI.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  10. ↑ Batalha, Natalie; Bean, Jacob; Stevenson, Kevin. "The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program (Natalie Batalha)" (PDF).
  11. ↑ The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team; Ahrer, Eva-Maria; Alderson, Lili; Batalha, Natalie M.; Batalha, Natasha E.; Bean, Jacob L.; Beatty, Thomas G.; Bell, Taylor J.; Benneke, Björn; Berta-Thompson, Zachory K.; Carter, Aarynn L.; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Espinoza, Néstor; Feinstein, Adina D.; Fortney, Jonathan J. (2023-02-23). "Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere". Nature. 614 (7949): 649–652. arXiv: 2208.11692 . Bibcode:2023Natur.614..649J. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05269-w . ISSN   0028-0836. PMC   9946830 . PMID   36055338.
  12. ↑ House Science, Space, and Technology Hearing on Initial Results from the James Webb Space Telescope, 17 November 2022, retrieved 2023-10-02
  13. ↑ Coulombe, Louis-Philippe; Benneke, Björn; Challener, Ryan; Piette, Anjali A. A.; Wiser, Lindsey S.; Mansfield, Megan; MacDonald, Ryan J.; Beltz, Hayley; Feinstein, Adina D.; Radica, Michael; Savel, Arjun B.; Dos Santos, Leonardo A.; Bean, Jacob L.; Parmentier, Vivien; Wong, Ian (August 2023). "A broadband thermal emission spectrum of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-18b". Nature. 620 (7973): 292–298. arXiv: 2301.08192 . Bibcode:2023Natur.620..292C. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06230-1 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMC   10412449 . PMID   37257843.
  14. ↑ "A Planet for Goldilocks" on YouTube
  15. ↑ "From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds" on YouTube
  16. ↑ "Natalie Batalha, Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Michaël Gillon: The World’s 100 Most Influential People".
  17. ↑ "2017 American Ingenuity Award Winners". Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  18. ↑ "Astronomer Natalie Batalha to receive Alumni Achievement Award".
  19. ↑ "Honorary Doctors of the Faculty of Science and Technology - Uppsala University". 8 June 2023.
  20. ↑ "New 2019 Academy Members Announced". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. April 17, 2019.
  21. ↑ "AAS Fellows". AAS. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  22. ↑ "Natalie Batalha is appointed the UCSC Presidential Chair". 23 June 2021.
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