Emily Levesque facts for kids

Emily Levesque, born in 1984, is an American astronomer and author. She is also a professor at the University of Washington. Emily is famous for studying huge stars and how they help us understand how galaxies form and change. She has written three books, including The Last Stargazers, a popular science book from 2020.

Emily Levesque's Early Life and Education

Emily Levesque grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts. She went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and earned a degree in physics in 2006. Later, she received her PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 2010.

Emily Levesque's Academic Career

From 2010 to 2015, Emily Levesque worked as a special researcher. She was an Einstein Fellow from 2010 to 2013. Then, she became a Hubble Fellow from 2013 to 2015. Since 2015, she has been a professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of Washington.

In 2015, Emily Levesque and her colleagues, Rachel Bezanson and Grant R. Tremblay, wrote an important paper. They looked at how the Physics GRE exam was used for applying to astronomy graduate schools. Their research showed that a student's score on this test did not predict how well they would do later in their studies. Because of this, the American Astronomical Society decided that the Physics GRE should not be a must-have for graduate school applications. Many astronomy programs have since stopped requiring this test.

Emily Levesque's Research

Emily Levesque uses both observations and computer models in her work. She uses the Hubble Space Telescope to look at light from galaxies where new stars are forming. This light is in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.

For visible light, she uses telescopes like Gemini and Keck on Mauna Kea. She also uses telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatories in Chile. With these, she studies very large, cool stars called red supergiants. She looks at them in our own Milky Way galaxy and in nearby galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. She has found many new red supergiants. She also found the first possible Thorne-Zytkow object, which is a very rare type of star.

Size comparison of Betelgeuse, Mu Cephei, KY Cygni, and V354 Cephei based on Emily Levesque's work.

In 2017, Emily Levesque had a fun conversation on Twitter with another astrophysicist, Jamie R. Lomax. This happened after some jumping spiders appeared in Emily's office. This chat led to some informal experiments about how these spiders see. A researcher named Nathan Morehouse, who studies spider eyesight, even calculated that these spiders could see the Moon! This mix of astronomy and spider science was called "arachno-astronomy." People on "Science Twitter" thought it was a great example of different science fields working together.

Awards and Recognition

In 2014, Emily Levesque received the Annie Jump Cannon Award. She earned it for her new ideas about gamma ray bursts, which are powerful explosions in space. In 2017, she was given a Sloan Fellowship. This award is given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to promising young scientists.

Emily Levesque was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in April 2022. From March to June 2023, she worked at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She was a U.S. Fulbright scholar there, researching Thorne–Żytkow objects.

Her book, Understanding Stellar Evolution, won an award in 2023. This book was co-written with Henny Lamers. It was based on a series of lectures for graduate students. The American Astronomical Society gave it the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award.

See also

In Spanish: Emily Levesque para niños