Natalie Batalha

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Natalie Batalha
Kepler Mission
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
UC Santa Cruz

Natalie M. Batalha (born 1966) is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at

Kepler Mission, the first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars.[1][2][3]

Biography

Batalha grew up in the

UC Santa Cruz, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[3][2]

Batalha's daughter Natasha Batalha is also an astronomer. The two women are collaborating on projects that discover and describe exoplanets found using the James Webb Space Telescope.[6]

Career

In 1997,

Kepler 10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside the Solar System.[3][7]

In November 2017, the Space Telescope Science Institute selected 13 programs for Director's Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) on the James Webb Space Telescope.[8][9] Of a total of 460 observation hours allocated, Batalha's project, 'The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program', was awarded 86.9 hours; the highest of any DD-ERS program on the JWST.[10] These observation hours are allocated to be used during the first five months of the telescope's operation.

Batalha leads the UC Santa Cruz Astrobiology Initiative, a collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe.

Following the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021, Batalha and a team of researchers found unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.[11] The team used JWST to observe a Saturn-mass planet called WASP-39b which orbits very close to a sun-like star about 700 light-years from Earth.

Batalha, along with Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division Director, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Steven L. Finkelstein, Professor of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics in 2022.[12]

Batalha and the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Early Release Science Team used the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023 to identify water vapor in the atmosphere of WASP-18b and make a temperature map of the planet as it slipped behind, and reappeared from, its star.[13]

Presentations

Batalha presented 'A Planet for Goldilocks' at Talks at Google in 2016. She presented 'From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds' at Breakthrough Initiatives in 2019.[14][15]

Recognition

In 2017, Batalha and two other exoplanet scientists were named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.[16] In the same year, Batalha won Smithsonian Magazine's American Ingenuity Award in Physical Sciences.[17] She received the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement award in 2018.

She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019[18] and a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Mission Scientist: Natalie Batalha". NASA. 2012-03-12. Archived from the original on September 15, 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Natalie Batalha". Space Science and Astrobiology at Ames. NASA. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c "Natalie Batalha". Kepler. NASA: Ames Research Center. Archived from the original on September 21, 2015. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  4. ^ Wolchover, Natalie (2021-12-03). "The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  5. ^ Ferris, Timothy; Archibald, Timothy. "Meet Natalie Batalha, the Explorer Who's Searching for Planets Across the Universe". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  6. ^ Mother–daughter duo work together to find new worlds, Nature Careers, 27 February 2023
  7. OL 25298995M
    .
  8. ^ "Selections Made for the JWST Director's Discretionary Early Release Science Program". wayback.archive-it.org. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  9. ^ "DD-ERS". STScI.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  10. ^ Batalha, Natalie; Bean, Jacob; Stevenson, Kevin. "The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program (Natalie Batalha)" (PDF).
  11. PMID 36055338
    .
  12. ^ House Science, Space, and Technology Hearing on Initial Results from the James Webb Space Telescope, retrieved 2023-10-02
  13. PMID 37257843
    .
  14. YouTube
  15. YouTube
  16. ^ Stern, Alan. "Natalie Batalha, Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Michaël Gillon". The World’s 100 Most Influential People. Time. Archived from the original on 2 May 2017.
  17. ^ "2017 American Ingenuity Award Winners". Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  18. ^ "New 2019 Academy Members Announced". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. April 17, 2019.
  19. ^ "AAS Fellows". AAS. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
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