Starsglaxiesspace - SPACE

Hey!! I find marine biology super cool, but everyone tells me I won't get a stable salary from it. Any advice?

Hello!! So sorry about the late reply. Anyway, I understand your struggle with people constantly wondering about the financial stability of a scientific career. For some scientific careers, especially those relating to marine biology, it is hard to estimate earnings because there are so many different pathways to chose from. What I mean by this is that your could take your passion for the ocean and work in many different places doing vastly different things. For example, you could work at a university teaching students and researching, or you could work in an aquarium taking care of animals, or you could work at a private research company/consulting firm. Each of these paths have different salary ranges. Another thing about marine biology is that it is a highly competitive field (and may be one of the reasons why people see this career as less stable than others.) 

I will not lie to you and say that marine biology careers are the most lucrative option out there; however, this does not mean that you cannot make a stable salary! Marine science careers, in my opinion, are more about your passion and drive to discover, educate, or conserve. So my main advice would be to continue doing what you love. If you are passionate about marine biology you will find that the advantages far outweigh the few downfalls. Also if you are not quiet sure if a career in marine sciences is your calling then you still have plenty of time to figure it out. Try interning or volunteering where you may be able to earn some experience.

Sorry about my rambling!! I hope it helped at least. 

And if it didn’t I highly suggest you check out SciAll.org’s YouTube channel. He has some cool videos. The video I linked here may help to answer your question.

Thank you so much and have a Thresher Shark for the road!!

Mount Bromo - Indonesia

@fyeahastropics they’re a little sloppy but I tried getting a picture through some eclipse viewing glasses!!!

Epic Mars portrait

via reddit

The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is designated IC 5067. Part of a larger emission region with a distinctive shape, popularly called The Pelican Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years and follows the curve of the cosmic pelican’s head and neck. https://go.nasa.gov/2hiMiLy

NASA’s Webb Telescope to investigate mysterious brown dwarfs

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Astronomers are hopeful that the powerful infrared capability of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will resolve a puzzle as fundamental as stargazing itself – what IS that dim light in the sky? Brown dwarfs muddy a clear distinction between stars and planets, throwing established understanding of those bodies, and theories of their formation, into question.

Several research teams will use Webb to explore the mysterious nature of brown dwarfs, looking for insight into both star formation and exoplanet atmospheres, and the hazy territory in-between where the brown dwarf itself exists. Previous work with Hubble, Spitzer, and ALMA have shown that brown dwarfs can be up to 70 times more massive than gas giants like Jupiter, yet they do not have enough mass for their cores to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight.

Though brown dwarfs were theorized in the 1960s and confirmed in 1995, there is not an accepted explanation of how they form: like a star, by the contraction of gas, or like a planet, by the accretion of material in a protoplanetary disk? Some have a companion relationship with a star, while others drift alone in space.

At the Université de Montréal, Étienne Artigau leads a team that will use Webb to study a specific brown dwarf, labeled SIMP0136. It is a low-mass, young, isolated brown dwarf – one of the closest to our Sun – all of which make it fascinating for study, as it has many features of a planet without being too close to the blinding light of a star.

SIMP0136 was the object of a past scientific breakthrough by Artigau and his team, when they found evidence suggesting it has a cloudy atmosphere. He and his colleagues will use Webb’s spectroscopic instruments to learn more about the chemical elements and compounds in those clouds.

“Very accurate spectroscopic measurements are challenging to obtain from the ground in the infrared due to variable absorption in our own atmosphere, hence the need for space-based infrared observation. Also, Webb allows us to probe features, such as water absorption, that are inaccessible from the ground at this level of precision,” Artigau explains.

These observations could lay groundwork for future exoplanet exploration with Webb, including which worlds could support life. Webb’s infrared instruments will be capable of detecting the types of molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets by seeing which elements are absorbing light as the planet passes in front of its star, a scientific technique known as transit spectroscopy.

“The brown dwarf SIMP0136 has the same temperature as various planets that will be observed in transit spectroscopy with Webb, and clouds are known to affect this type of measurement; our observations will help us better understand cloud decks in brown dwarfs and planet atmospheres in general,” Artigau says.

The search for low-mass, isolated brown dwarfs was one of the early science goals put forward for the Webb telescope in the 1990s, says astronomer Aleks Scholz of the University of St. Andrews.

Brown dwarfs have a lower mass than stars and do not “shine” but merely emit the dim afterglow of their birth, and so they are best seen in infrared light, which is why Webb will be such a valuable tool in this research.

Scholz, who also leads the Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters (SONYC) project, will use Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) to study NGC 1333 in the constellation of Perseus. NGC 1333 is a stellar nursery that has also been found to harbor an unusually high number of brown dwarfs, some of them at the very low end of the mass range for such objects - in other words, not much heavier than Jupiter.

“In more than a decade of searching, our team has found it is very difficult to locate brown dwarfs that are less than five Jupiter-masses - the mass where star and planet formation overlap. That is a job for the Webb telescope,” Scholz says. “It has been a long wait for Webb, but we are very excited to get an opportunity to break new ground and potentially discover an entirely new type of planets, unbound, roaming the Galaxy like stars.”

Both of the projects led by Scholz and Artigau are making use of Guaranteed Time Observations (GTOs), observing time on the telescope that is granted to astronomers who have worked for years to prepare Webb’s scientific operations.

TOP IMAGE….Artist’s conception of a brown dwarf, featuring the cloudy atmosphere of a planet and the residual light of an almost-star. Credit NASA/ESA/JPL

LOWER IMAGE….Stellar cluster NGC 1333 is home to a large number of brown dwarfs. Astronomers will use Webb’s powerful infrared instruments to learn more about these dim cousins to the cluster’s bright newborn stars. Credit NASA/CXC/JPL