One in all a telescope operator’s number one jobs is to stay any stray gentle out of the tool. Earthly and different unwelcome photons can swamp the cosmic gentle from far-off stars and galaxies. Right through greater than a decade as a venture scientist for the James Webb Area Telescope, Jane Rigby obsessed over minimizing gentle leaks — with unusual fulfillment. The sky appears to be like darker to JWST than maximum somebody had was hoping.
Rigby herself, now the senior venture scientist for JWST, is a supply of sunshine.
“I bear in mind the sunshine in her eyes,” says astrophysicist Jane Charlton, who met Rigby the summer season prior to her freshman yr at Penn State and later suggested her analysis. “Jane had improbable grades, however that’s now not essentially what I search for. The affection of astronomy, and keenness for that, is what I search for.”
Just about 3 a long time later, Rigby’s palpable pleasure in discussing the fulfillment of JWST, which introduced on December 25, 2021, has made her one of the crucial public faces of the telescope. She introduced the telescope’s first photographs on the White Area and has given keynote speeches at one of the largest astronomy conferences (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30). Right through public appearances, she steadily wears JWST-themed socks, scarves and pins. “I’ve JWST socks for just about on a daily basis of the week,” she says.
She has additionally lit a trail for queer astronomers, in addition to others who’re traditionally underrepresented in astronomy. Rigby has been out as a part of the LGBTQ+ group since 2000, when she met her now-wife after they have been each astronomy graduate scholars on the College of Arizona in Tucson. She has trustworthy a lot of her profession to retaining the door open for others.
“I didn’t develop up with any queer function fashions,” she says. “I am hoping I’m the final era for which that’s true.”
Specializing in the tools
Rigby recollects being requested to attract a favourite TV display in preschool. She used up a whole black crayon drawing Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.
Her hobby in area crystallized right into a profession plan at about age 12, after she noticed Sally Experience discuss at a neighborhood faculty. Experience, the primary American girl in area, made Rigby wish to be an astronaut.
“I knew there have been two paths to changing into an astronaut: a check pilot or a scientist,” she says. “And it used to be beautiful transparent that I used to be by no means going to be tall sufficient to fly the go back and forth.” At 5 toes, 2 inches tall, she’s nonetheless two inches too quick to had been an area go back and forth pilot. If she couldn’t make it to area, she noticed extra possible in science than in flying planes.
Rigby’s first revel in the usage of a telescope for analysis, as an undergraduate scholar at Penn State, used to be stymied by way of gentle leaks. She, Charlton and every other scholar traveled to western Texas to make use of the telescope on the McDonald Observatory. They have been taking a look to catch gentle from quasar filtering thru a diffuse and mysterious cloud of cosmic gasoline. Those small, dense clouds seem to be filled with heavy components from supernova explosions, however strangely, they’re now not present in galaxies’ facilities the place numerous stars are born and death. “We have been, at the moment, making an attempt to determine what they have been,” Charlton says. “As we nonetheless are.”
After an evening of guiding the telescope by way of hand, the crowd discovered that gentle from one thing instead of the quasar — perhaps an alert gentle on an tool panel — had flooded the telescope. The trio tracked it down, lined it with tape and attempted once more. The similar factor took place evening after evening. In the end, they returned to Pennsylvania and not using a quasar information.
“It didn’t paintings,” Rigby says. “But it surely used to be in point of fact amusing. I used to be finding out the whole lot, making an attempt to be told how the telescope labored.”
Since then, Rigby has used many primary telescopes, from the ones on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to the Magellan telescopes in Chile to the Spitzer and Hubble area telescopes. Alongside the way in which, her analysis advanced a theme: investigating how galaxies develop and alter together with the tremendouslarge black holes hiding inside.
However her way is much less “How can I solution this burning query?” and extra “What can I do with this glossy new tool?”
“I’m an overly observational astronomer,” she says. “I can use any telescope I will be able to get my fingers on.”
All that telescope time supposed she used to be able to sign up for the JWST staff when the chance got here.
“As a result of she had noticed information from Spitzer and Hubble,” JWST’s precursors, says astronomer Matt Mountain of the Affiliation of Universities for Analysis in Astronomy in Washington, D.C., “she knew what she used to be on the lookout for.”
Assembly the James Webb Area Telescope
Rigby started running on JWST in 2010, when she took a task at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Md., because the telescope’s deputy operations venture scientist.
One of the crucial first issues she did used to be learn the document of an impartial overview panel that discovered that the telescope used to be mismanaged, over price range by way of billions of bucks and would release years later than at the start deliberate (SN: 11/11/10). “I’ve for sure been 4 years from release a couple of instances,” she says.
Sooner than release, maximum of her time used to be trustworthy to creating positive that adjustments to the telescope’s design wouldn’t reduce to rubble the science. She imagined imaginable techniques to make use of JWST and met with different staff individuals to ensure the general telescope would ship on the ones objectives. Would the telescope fabrics glow or free up gases that would freeze to the device? May just JWST use two cameras concurrently? May just it find out about transferring objectives, like asteroids throughout the sun machine (SN: 11/5/22, p. 14)?
“As a result of she is a running scientist who in point of fact sought after to make use of the information,” Mountain says, “she used to be a great selection for operations scientist,” a task she moved as much as in 2018. “In those complicated areas, with the entire engineering, the personalities, the politics at NASA, running with contractors, she at all times helps to keep her eye at the prize: What science are we seeking to do?”
Rigby bridged the divide between the science and engineering groups, serving to them discuss a commonplace language. Her activity has been “numerous lively listening and comfortable energy, numerous synthesizing and a dose of specialised technical experience,” she says. “Oftentimes I’m the big-picture particular person in a room stuffed with consultants.”
After the telescope introduced, were given in place and opened up itself — “the six-month unwrapping of the Christmas provide,” Rigby says — her activity shifted to characterizing how smartly the telescope works. In almost each and every metric, it’s a dream come true.
There’s better-than-expected symbol high quality, upper sensitivity, quicker reaction instances and an extended possible challenge lifetime than predicted prior to release — and almost no gentle leaks. The telescope’s nice golden mirrors are uncovered to area, and light-weight can scatter off filth grains at the mirrors, registering on photographs as faint, diffuse patterns the staff calls “wisps” and “claws,” or a ghostly streak dubbed “the lightsaber.” However the mirrors proved remarkably dust-free, that means the sky seems extremely darkish.
“It’s now not an coincidence that the telescope works so smartly,” she says. “That used to be cautious paintings previously.”
When requested about such successes, and her personal, Rigby issues to an enormous quantity of labor by way of tens of 1000’s of other folks. “I perceive the will to humanize one thing that may appear in point of fact massive and impersonal. However I don’t just like the singling out,” she says. “I attempt to replicate it again to the staff.” It took 1000’s of other folks and duties to verify JWST’s fulfillment. Engineer Larkin Carey, with Ball Aerospace, for instance, wiped clean each and every sq. centimeter of the telescope’s mirrors by way of hand with a device like a shaving brush, Rigby says.
With the telescope running so smartly, Rigby may flip her consideration to the medical questions. She is helping lead an gazing program referred to as TEMPLATES, taking a look at galaxies whose gentle has been magnified by way of foreground items to get a glimpse at how the galaxies sort stars. At a June assembly in Albuquerque of the American Astronomical Society, Rigby shared how the TEMPLATES staff discovered hydrocarbons, “the similar stuff that smoke is made from,” in a galaxy whose gentle dates again greater than 12 billion years — the furthest again in time such molecules had ever been noticed.
Early in July, Rigby changed into the senior venture scientist for JWST; it’s her activity to determine tips on how to get probably the most and best possible science out of the telescope.
Analysis colleagues describe her as superhuman. “I don’t understand how she does the whole lot that she does, and does the whole lot smartly,” says TEMPLATES collaborator Keren Sharon of the College of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And Rigby’s enthusiasm is plentiful: “She will get giddy,” Sharon says. “It may well be about working out a worm, or finding this tremendous thrilling factor a few galaxy that we didn’t know prior to … and he or she’s actually bouncing. Her face lighting fixtures up.”
Opening doorways for others
Rigby desires somebody as a way to revel in and pursue that enthusiasm. When she began attending American Astronomical Society conferences within the Nineties, she didn’t know there used to be a secret LGBTQ+ networking dinner. “You needed to comprehend it existed. That used to be a bit of closety. But it surely’s the place other folks have been.”
On the time, there used to be a loss of coverage from employment discrimination and no ensure of institutional give a boost to for astronomers with same-sex companions. Rigby recollects accepting a fellowship at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., and in an instant having to request medical insurance advantages to hide her spouse.
“That’s awkward,” she says. “You wish to have to be speaking about your science and your telescope proposals, now not how can I am getting medical insurance for my kinfolk as a result of we’re other.” Discovering different LGBTQ+ astronomers used to be “a lifeline,” she says.
Nowadays, the meet-up at AAS is simply too massive to move out to dinner. At a January 2023 assembly in Seattle, “we misplaced rely at 120 other folks. We needed to spill out into the hallway,” Rigby says. “That feels just right.”
Seeing queer astronomers like Rigby up to now alongside of their careers used to be useful to Traci Johnson, a knowledge scientist who used to be a graduate scholar in astronomy in Sharon’s lab on the College of Michigan. Johnson identifies as lesbian and nonbinary and got here out all through graduate college. “I spotted it’s imaginable to be out, and be at liberty, and even have a in point of fact wonderful profession,” Johnson says.
Rigby has taken an lively function in encouraging inclusivity, regardless that she appears to be up towards the legacy of JWST’s namesake. Many astronomers have referred to as for the telescope to be renamed as a result of James Webb used to be NASA administrator at a time when the U.S. govt fired workers for being homosexual.
Rigby received’t remark at the telescope’s identify. However her give a boost to for LGBTQ+ astronomers is obvious. Rigby used to be a founding member of the AAS Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy, which matches to advertise equality for LGBTQ+ astronomers throughout the box; has co-organized meetings on making astronomy extra inclusive; and authored a contemporary white paper urging the astronomy group to deal with range, inclusion and harassment. A present precedence is ensuring trans other folks really feel protected and welcome.
Rigby doesn’t wish to be pigeonholed as “the homosexual astronomer.” She is aware of her contributions to astronomy lengthen a long way past any explicit team. However she says the management abilities, resilience and talent to shift her standpoint that she has discovered thru dwelling and organizing as a member of the LGBTQ+ group have made her a greater astronomer. They’re abilities she transfers to her function as a pace-setter at NASA.
“The entire imaginative and prescient is, you get to deliver your original self to paintings,” she says. “And paintings embraces your original self.”