At the end of January I had the opportunity to photograph UC Berkeley Astronomy Professor, and planet hunter, Dr. Geoffrey Marcy. Professor Marcy spends much of his time using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to conduct his search for exoplanets that are similar to Earth.
“…Dr. Marcy and his colleague Andrew Howard spent five years surveying the frequency of planets among 166 of the nearest and brightest sun-like stars. They calculated last October that there ought to be about 23 Earth-size planets for every 100 sun-like stars, meaning there could be billions of such worlds in the galaxy.”
For the photo shoot Dr. Marcy took me to the telescope dome atop the Astronomy building at UC Berkeley. It was a beautiful day and we could see San Francisco in the distance. Being an avid fan of Science Fiction, I was curious what films a scientist who spends his time searching for planets in space might like. ( I feel there must also be some obligatory relevance to a Sci-Fi film liked but someone who has discovered countless planets.) Turns out Dr. Marcy is fond of Star Trek IV, where Kirk and the crew travel back in time to San Francisco and communicate with whales. He also enjoys Contact, up until the part with the preacher man.
Read the story in The Wall Street Journal here
This entry was written by , posted on February 7, 2011 at 1:26 pm, filed under Commissioned, Portrait and tagged Astronomy, Berkeley, Geoffrey Marcy, Kepler Mission, Mauna Kea, Planet Hunters, The Wall Street Journal. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.