June 2004 ❊ Jocelyn Bell Burnell is Dean of Science at Bath University, England. She looks back at the discovery CONTENTS of pulsars 35 years ago, in her Presidential Address of 2003 to the Royal Astronomical Society. Pliers, pulsars and extreme physics This article first appeared in the February In an area the equivalent Jocelyn Bell Burnell 2004 issue of Astronomy and Geophysics of two football pitches, six of us built an array of a thousand 1 and is reprinted here with the permission wooden posts, 2048 copper Portrait of a Decade: Results of Blackwell Publishing and the author. dipoles and 120 miles of wire and cable. It operated at 81.5 from the 2003 CSWA Survey Bell-Burnell collection MHz and took about two of Women in Astronomy Pliers, pulsars and extreme years to build. We built the Jennifer L. Hoffman and Meg Urry physics Photo by telescope at the height of the Jocelyn Bell Rhodesian copper crisis, using 1 By Jocelyn Bell Burnell Burnell several tons of copper wire, The Leaky Pipeline for Women hirty-five years ago, when research students and we always had nightmares that we would in Physics and Astronomy joined the Cambridge Radio Astronomy come out one morning to find someone had been T Group they were presented with a set of round with wire cutters and removed the copper. Fran Bagenal tools. It was very nice that the Cavendish could It had happened to one of the subsidiary radio 13 afford to give tools to all of us, but it was also a telescopes, but it didn’t happen to this one. Voices from the Pipeline very clear statement about what kind of work I was primarily responsible for the cables and you were expected to do. In fact I spent the first plugs. John Pilkington mass-produced antennae Sheila E. Widnall two years of my PhD “in the field”, in one field and feeder wire and from time to time almost got 20 in particular on the Barton Road about three tangled up in birds nests of copper wire, and miles from the centre of Cambridge, at the Lords wehad some enthusiastic summer students with The Astronomical Community Bridge Radio Astronomy Observatory. Loses a Rising Star Continued on page 2 Pat Knezek, Joannah Hinz, and Meg Urry 25 Portrait of a Decade: Results from the 2003 CSWA Survey of Diversity Survey Women in Astronomy Laura Lopez Editor’s Note By Jennifer L. Hoffman and Meg Urry By Fran Bagenal 26 n the early 1990s, the organizers of the first A Prize Response his issue of STATUS heralds a Women in Astronomy conference at STScI transition in the editorial team. I Chris Russell realized that although anecdotal evidence and Lisa Frattare has stepped down, their own experience suggested that women were 26 Meg Urry has stepped back and T underrepresented among astronomers, no statistical Notices Pat Knezek is chairing the CSWA. Fran data existed to help them define or quantify the Bagenal has taken over the reins, with problem; past demographic surveys had always 27 Joannah Hinz continuing to assist. This issue combined astronomy with physics or other Notes from a Life contains several articles presenting results of sciences. The STScI group therefore set out to surveys of demographics. We hope that conduct the first survey of the gender distribution Anonymous Readers’ Contributions future issues will emphasize what can be done of astronomers at major U.S. institutions. Ethan 31 - by individuals, employers and institutions – Schreier presented their results at the Women in to improve the numbers of women and work Astronomy conference (Proceedings of the ❖ A Publication of the environment in our profession of astronomy. Conference on Women in Astronomy, 1992; American Astronomical (see photos on the back page) www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/WiA/schreier.pdf). Society Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy Continued on page 8 2 STATUS Pliers, pulsars continued from page 1 sledgehammers. I was spared most of the sledge- hammering but nonetheless when I left I could STATUS swing a sledge. So my first couple of years involved a lot of very heavy work in the field, or Edited by in a very cold shed, with a team of people who Fran Bagenal (U. of Colorado) were very good to work with. In the rubric [email protected] describing research studentships there was (and probably still is) something about acquiring skills Associate Editors – and don’t supervisors exploit that! Joannah Hinz (University of Arizona) We were using a technique that was novel [email protected] then, called interplanetary scintillation. Basically, and Patricia Knezek (WIYN Observatory) just as in the night sky you can see that stars twinkle [email protected] and planets don’t (by and large), so in the radio sky compact objects scintillate and extended Contributing Editors objects do not. The true nature of quasars began Meg Urry (Yale University) to be appreciated in about [email protected] 1963 when Martin Schmidt Figure 1: Our technician Don and Lisa Frattare (STScI) identified the redshift of quasar Rolph and the four-acre [email protected] telescope. One row of antennae 3C48. In 1965 Tony Hewish goes behind Don’s right shoulder, won a large sum of money from Design by and another runs from the top the Science Research Council to righthand corner of the photo. Krista Wildt (STScI) build this radio telescope. Tony’s Twin-wire feeder from an antenna [email protected] curves down past Don’s head proposal hinged on the fact that and joins a horizontal run of compact quasars would twinkle Published by twin-wire feeder. The slanting or scintillate whereas the rather the American Astronomical Society beams carry the reflector (tilted more extended, large angular to look at the ecliptic); the 2000 Florida Avenue, NW, Suite 400 diameter radio galaxies would reflector is made up of wire, too Washington, DC 20009 fine to be seen in the photo." not, so we had a neat way of © 2004 AAS picking out the quasars. All rights reserved. Interplanetary scintillation in action STATUS is produced at the Not only could we pick out the quasars, we Space Telescope Science Institute could even get a stab at their angular diameter, 3700 San Martin Drive because the scintillation is caused by the solar Baltimore, MD 21218 wind, the plasma that is blowing out from the Sun. That plasma is not perfectly uniform. It Copyrights for contributed or reproduced contains blobs or clouds which gradually expand material may rest with the author. These articles as they move away from the Sun. If the source is reflect the opinions of the authors, which are sufficiently small that you see it through just one not necessarily the opinions of the editors, blob, or between blobs, then it will twinkle as the STScI or the AAS. STATUS is published for blobs blow across, but if it’s extended and you’re the personal use of AAS members. seeing it through several blobs then it doesn’t twinkle much. When the line of sight to a quasar The STATUS newsletter is distributed to AAS is well away from the Sun, you are looking members at the January and June meetings and through one expanded blob after another and the sent to home institutions of subscribers during quasar will scintillate like fury. Closer to the Sun the week of the meeting. Contributed articles where the angular diameter is comparable to the are encouraged. Deadlines for submission are blob size, you look through several blobs and the October 1 and March 1, respectively. scintillation disappears. If the broad idea is correct you can watch an object through the year and see For more information on subscribing to when it starts scintillating and when it stops and that, STATUS, submitting articles in theory, gives you a measure of the angular diameter. or obtaining back issues, And so, when I arrived in Cambridge, was please visit the STATUS website: presented with my tools and started building this http://www.aas.org/~cswa/status radio telescope, I believed I was in a project to identify as many quasars as possible in the sky visible from Cambridge, and to have a stab at measuring June 2004 3 their angular diameters. And in fact, that is what those hundreds of feet of chart paper. It was quite my thesis was about, because by the time pulsars a job just keeping up with it and my logbook has came along, my supervisor, Tony, advised me that dismal statements like “now 1000 feet behind it was too late to change the thesis’ title. From with the chart analyses” and “now 2000 feet what I now know about university systems, I behind with the chart analyses”. In the six months think he was wrong, but as a PhD student I that I personally operated the telescope, several believed him. So the pulsars went in an appendix miles of chart were recorded. and I wrote a substantial thesis on the angular diameters A scientist, particularly somebody trained in of quasars using an interplanetary scintillation the physical sciences, has a brain that stores technique, all done within a three-year period. problems, such as things one doesn’t understand. An important factor in this story is that the Those of us who have trained as physicists have scintillation, the “twinkling”, is quite rapid, and if learnt to be economical with our brains. We you’re going to “see” twinkling you have to have know that if we understand something we don’t a system that responds fast enough to follow the need to worry, but if there’s something we don’t changes in brightness.