Amy Barger facts for kids

Amy J. Barger (born January 18, 1971) is an American astronomer. She is a special professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is known for being a pioneer in using data from many telescopes. This helps her study different kinds of light from space. She has discovered distant galaxies and huge supermassive black holes. These objects are often outside what we can see with our eyes. Barger is also an active member of the International Astronomical Union.

Studying the Universe

Amy Barger studied astronomy and physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her first degree in 1993. She then went to King's College, Cambridge in England as a special scholar. There, she earned her PhD in astronomy in 1997. Today, she is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also works with the University of Hawaii Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Amazing Discoveries

Dr. Barger's research focuses on distant parts of the Universe. She studies things like dusty galaxies, quasars, and supermassive black holes. Her work has changed how scientists think galaxies and black holes grow and change over time.

Research at the University of Hawaii

From 1996 to 2000, Dr. Barger worked at the University of Hawaii. She was part of a group called the MORPHS collaboration. This group studied how distant galaxies formed and looked. They used data from the Hubble Space Telescope. They also used other tools to analyze light and images. Their work helped them study about 2,000 distant galaxies. They found that galaxies change in different ways over time.

Dr. Barger also used a special camera called SCUBA. This camera sees far-infrared light. She used it to find new quasars. She also got to use NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO). This was part of her Hubble and Chandra Fellowships.

In 2000, Dr. Barger and her team shared exciting news. They were looking for where the cosmic X-ray background comes from. This is a glow of X-rays from all over space. They found that about one-third of this glow comes from active galactic nuclei (AGNs). AGNs are bright centers of galaxies. They have a huge black hole that pulls in gas very fast. This process makes X-rays. The team also found that very faint galaxies cause another third of the X-ray background. These galaxies don't give off much visible light. This is because dust or cool gas blocks it. The team suggested that even stronger telescopes were needed to learn more.

Later in 2000, Dr. Barger led another study on black holes. Her team used powerful telescopes like the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Very Large Array. They studied how long it takes for black holes to grow. They found that many black holes in nearby galaxies were still growing. This was happening more recently than scientists had thought. They concluded that not all black holes formed at the same time as their galaxies. Some black holes are still growing slowly, taking billions of years.

Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

In 2000, Dr. Barger became a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She continued her research there.

In 2001, she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy. This award was for her work on the X-ray background. She also received a grant from the National Science Foundation to help fund her research.

In 2002, she won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy. This award recognized her great achievements in observing space. In 2003, she received a large grant from the Packard Foundation. This money helped her continue her important research.

In 2005, Dr. Barger led a study about how black holes and galaxies grow. Their findings were published in The Astronomical Journal. Her team took long-exposure X-ray images of black holes. These black holes are usually hidden by gas and dust. They found these black holes were between one and 12 billion light-years away from Earth. By looking at different parts of the sky, they counted how many black holes exist. They found that the very first black holes grew quickly and then stopped. These were huge, at least 100 million times the mass of the Sun. Smaller black holes (10 to 100 million times the Sun's mass) kept growing slowly. The team also found that galaxies forming stars and black holes growing seem to happen together. Dr. Barger and her team called this 'cosmic downsizing'. This means that star formation is shifting to smaller galaxies.

Dr. Barger's research has helped us understand the early Universe. It helps us figure out when galaxies and stars formed after the Big Bang. Scientists use something called redshift to do this. Redshift means light from distant galaxies is stretched towards the red end of the light spectrum. The more redshifted a galaxy is, the older, brighter, and farther away it is.

In 2013, Dr. Barger and her colleagues published a study about how matter is spread out in galaxies. They used special surveys to look at how light from galaxies is stretched. They found that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is inside a huge empty space. This space is called the KBC Void. It was named after the research team. As of 2017, the KBC Void is the largest known empty space in the Universe. It is about 2 billion light-years across. Later, Dr. Barger's student confirmed the KBC Void's existence. They used a method to measure how galaxy clusters move. This showed that the KBC Void is shaped like a sphere. It is surrounded by a shell of galaxies and other cosmic materials.

Awards and Honors

Dr. Amy Barger has received many awards for her work:

• 1992 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
• 1993 Marshall Scholarship
• 1999 NASA Hubble Fellowship
• 1999 Chandra Fellow
• 2001 Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy
• 2002 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society
• 2002 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow
• 2003 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow
• 2003 David and Lucille Packard Fellow
• 2007 American Physical Society Fellow
• 2007 Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society
• 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow
• 2011 Vilas Associates Award at University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow
• 2017 Kellett Mid-Career Award at University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 2021 American Astronomical Society Fellow

See also

In Spanish: Amy Barger para niños