About the guest:Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, where she leads a long-term stellar astrophysics research program studying massive stars. Her group is also working on a data sonification project called TransientZoo that allows participants, including people who are visually impaired, to classify lightcurves via sound. Emily teaches astronomy and scientific writing at UW, has released a Great Courses lecture class on “Great Heroes and Discovery of Astronomy”, co-authored a textbook on stellar evolution, and wrote the first book of its kind on red supergiant stars. As a physics undergraduate at MIT, Emily discovered the three largest stars in the universe. She has an astronomy PhD from the University of Hawaii and led the discovery of a completely new type of star in 2014. Research by Emily and collaborators inspired changes in graduate astronomy school admissions policies which should reduce barriers for women and students of colour.
Rhiannon: Thank you, Emily, for taking the time to answer some questions for our members today. We received a lot of them, so we’re just going to dive in. The first question a lot of people asked was what sparked your interest in astronomy?
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