Astronomer
I work at MIT's Center for Space Research as a data analyst for the Chandra X-ray Telescope. My title, "data analyst," is literally what I do every day. The data I work on are X-ray pictures of supernova remnants (exploded stars). On my computer I use special software to take data in raw form and turn it into something usable (kind of like when you get the pictures from your camera developed). Then I measure certain things in the data, like how bright certain parts of the picture are. One of my favorite things about my work is all the great pictures I get to look at!

--stargirl

Astronomer
I spend most of my day using computer programs to produce maps of stars that are like the Sun. Some days are spent just programming, to correct mistakes in the maps. At least 1 week of every year is spent meeting other astronomers who work on similar stars at a conference. We either give talks or poster presentations of our work. This way we can exchange information about our latest results and come up with new projects and ideas that we can study. Most years I spend 3 or 4 nights on a mountain collecting data at telescopes. We spend most of that time hoping for nice clear nights so we can come away with lots of new results!

--Flare

Astronomer
I spend most of my day writing computer programs and then using them to take the data from special cameras into pictures and analyze the data in other ways. Sometimes I work in a lab called a 'clean room'. It is a room that has almost all of the dust filtered out of it. I have to wear a special suit which covers my clothes and skin and hair, so I don't bring in or make any dust while I'm there. We use the lab to put together the cameras that I use. On even rarer occasions, I get to use the cameras to take data. The cameras are designed to look at ultraviolet light. The earth's atmosphere blocks most of the UV light coming from space from reaching us (which is good for us, but bad for astronomers trying to see that light). This means that I need to send my cameras above the atmosphere. I do this by putting my cameras on rockets and launching them. Launches are very funto see, but they're also very expensive because of all the people that have to be involved to make sure it goes well.

--astrogirl

Computer Scientist
I spend a lot of time at the computer! I also get together many times throughout the day with the rest of the Chandra Education & Outreach group to discuss upcoming projects. Some of the things I did today included colorizing a new Chandra public image of galaxy with fascinating boomerang-shape arm stucture, worked on the special online article about the Leonid meteor shower (http://chandra.harvard.edu/chronicle/0401/leonids.html), programmed an interactive web page that will calculate scales between objects in the sky, worked on a CD-ROM of Chandra images which is going to be distributed to 15,000 people at the next meeting of the American Astronomical Society at January's meeting in Wash D.C. So as you can see I am pretty busy!

--Starry Night

Astronomer
I am still working towards my PhD so my daily activities are split between classwork and research. The classwork part is the same as anyone taking classes, studying and doing homework problems. As for the research part, mostly I spend my day on the computer, either working with various programs to analyze data, or using the internet. Also, I spend time writing, editing and reading papers. The best part is the interaction with the other scientists. We discuss the research we are doing, what problems we have encountered and try to help each other with those problems.

--Astrogirl2

Click on "See Other Girls' Questions" below to find out what other types of scientists do each day!