Interview with Professor Alexei Filippenko

Berkeley Scientific: the journal of young scientists

article

Prashant Bhat¹  Kuntal Chowdhary¹  Jingyan Wang¹  Ali Palla¹ 

[1] University of California

关键词: Astronomy;   

DOI  :  10.5070/BS3172020104

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: University of California, Berkeley

【 摘 要 】

F: As a graduate student at Caltech, I was doing asurvey of the five hundred brightest, nearest galaxiesin the northern hemisphere to find evidence for a giantblack hole that’s swallowing material. Little miniaturequasars. Quasars are bright, luminous bodies very faraway. We think that they are big black holes swallowinglots of material at the center of galaxies. So in nearbyparts of the universe there should be descendents ofquasars. In other words, the black holes should still bethere, swallowing material at a lower rate.I was doing a survey at the 200-inch (5.1 meter) HaleTelescope at the Palomar Observatory with my formerthesis advisor at Caltech, Wal Sargent. This is nowFebruary of 1985, I’m a post-doctoral scholar now atBerkeley and at the end of the fifth night of the fivenight observing run I had time left for just two moregalaxies to observe. I had a hundred possibilitiesbecause the survey was still in its early stages—I chosea galaxy almost at random because the picture of itlooked interesting. So I said, “let’s survey that one.” .

【 授权许可】

Unknown