Sandra Faber looks at the stars.
She learns how space works. She helps build big tools to see far away. These tools help us see the sky. Her work helps us know the world. Do you like to look at the stars?
Sandra Faber is a scientist. She studies space and far away stars.
She found a way to link brightness to speed. This helps us see how galaxies work. She also helped build a very big telescope. This tool uses many small parts to see light.
She even worked on a famous space camera. This camera helps us look at the sky. Her work helps us learn about the universe.
Sandra Faber is an astrophysicist. An astrophysicist is a scientist who studies space.
She studies how galaxies change over time. Faber found a link between two things. She saw how bright a galaxy is. She also saw how fast its stars move. This is called the Faber–Jackson relation.
This work helps us understand galaxies.
Faber also helped build big tools. She worked on the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. These telescopes use a large mirror. The mirror has 36 small, six-sided parts. She also helped with the Hubble Space Telescope. She worked on a camera for it. This camera helps us see the sky from space.
Faber also studied dark matter. Dark matter is a type of matter we cannot see. She helped show how it helps make galaxies. Her work helps us know how the universe grew. She has won many big awards for her science. One is the National Medal of Science. A small rock in space is even named after her.
Sandra Faber is a famous American astrophysicist. An astrophysicist is a scientist who studies the stars and space.
She studies how galaxies form and change over time. This work helps us understand the history of our universe. She works at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also works at the Lick Observatory. Her research is very important for science.
Faber discovered a special way that galaxies work. She found a link between how bright a galaxy is. She also looked at how fast the stars move inside it. This link is called the Faber–Jackson relation.
She also studied dark matter. Dark matter is a type of matter that we cannot see. Faber helped show that dark matter is likely made of slow-moving particles. This is called cold dark matter. Her work helped explain how galaxies grew after the Big Bang.
Faber has had a long and busy career. She studied at Swarthmore College and earned her degree in 1966. Then she went to Harvard University for her PhD. She finished her doctoral studies in 1972. In that same year, she joined the staff at Lick Observatory. She was the very first woman to work on that staff.
She also helped build some of the best tools for looking at space. Faber helped design the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. The Keck telescope has a huge 10-meter mirror. This mirror is made of 36 hexagonal segments.
She also worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. She helped fix a problem with its camera. This camera is called the wide field planetary camera. She also worked on the CANDELS project. This is the largest survey of the universe done by the Hubble telescope.
Many groups have given Faber awards for her great work. She won the National Medal of Science in 2017. She also won the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2018. She received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2020. Even a small rock in space is named after her. This rock is called minor planet #283277 Faber. Her life shows how curiosity can help us see the stars.
Sandra Faber is a prominent American astrophysicist. An astrophysicist is a scientist who uses physics to study the universe. Faber focuses her research on the evolution of galaxies. This means she studies how galaxies form and change over time. Her work helps us understand the history of the entire universe. She is currently a University Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also conducts research at the Lick Observatory.
One of Faber's most famous discoveries is the Faber–Jackson relation. In 1976, she observed a specific link between certain galaxy properties. She found that the brightness of a galaxy relates to the orbital speeds of its stars. This means the faster stars move, the brighter the galaxy tends to be. She co-discovered this law with a graduate student named Robert Jackson. This discovery helped scientists understand the internal mechanics of distant galaxies. It provided a new way to look at how galaxies are built.
Faber also made major contributions to our understanding of dark matter. Dark matter is a mysterious substance that does not emit light. In 1979, she and John S. Gallagher published evidence for its existence. In 1983, Faber published research regarding the speed of these particles. She showed that dark matter is likely "cold dark matter." This means it is made of slow-moving particles rather than fast-moving neutrinos. In 1984, she worked with other scientists to explain how dark matter helps galaxies form. This theory describes how structure grew in the universe after the Big Bang.
Beyond theory, Faber helped build the tools used to see the cosmos. She was instrumental in the creation of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. While Jerry Nelson designed the telescopes, Faber helped promote the idea of large optical telescopes globally. The Keck telescope is the second largest optical telescope in the world. It uses a massive 10-meter primary mirror. This mirror is unique because it consists of 36 hexagonal segments. Faber also worked on the Keck II telescope. She helped add a new optical spectrograph to it in 1996. This tool increased the telescope's power by 13-fold for observing far galaxies.
Faber's expertise was also vital for the Hubble Space Telescope. In 1990, she assisted with the commissioning of its wide field planetary camera. During this time, the telescope had a flaw called spherical aberration. This is an error in how the optics focus light. Faber and her team helped diagnose this specific cause. She also served as the principal investigator for the Nuker Team. This group used the Hubble telescope to search for supermassive black holes. These are incredibly large and heavy objects found at the centers of galaxies.
Throughout her career, Faber has led many important scientific projects. In the late 1980s, she joined the "Seven Samurai" collaboration. This eight-year project tried to catalogue 400 galaxies. Although they did not reach that exact goal, they succeeded in another way. They developed a reliable method to estimate the distance to any galaxy. This helped scientists measure the total density of the universe. More recently, she joined the CANDELS project. This is the largest survey of the universe ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Faber has received many prestigious honors for her scientific achievements. In 1985, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She won the National Medal of Science in 2017. In 2018, she received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology. She was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2020. Her impact is even seen in our solar system. A small rock in space, known as minor planet #283277, is named Faber. Her life of study continues to shape how we see the stars.
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