Using the Hubble Telescope to Discover Elements of Interest - Week 1

By Rabeea Ahmed

My name is Rabeea Ahmed and I am from Islamabad, Pakistan. This summer, I am very excited to be working at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland!

As an undergraduate student of Computer Science and
Astrophysics, I am enthralled by the power of computers in data-analysis, and fascinated by astronomy as a science that uncovers the deepest mysteries of our universe. My work at the STScI resolves around combining these two fields as I work on data-quality assessment for the Hubble Legacy Archive.

The Hubble Space Telescope - launched in 1990 - has collected a great volume of useful ultra-violet data throughout its life. This data will form the basis of many studies of our

cosmos for  decades to come. However, the catalogs that astronomers currently use to gather this data are not very user-friendly, and so much of the time spent during research in astronomy today is invested in data-collection and refining. The Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) project seeks to reduce this time frame by providing scientists a quick and easy “one-stop-shop” for all their data needs. In short, my job this summer is to work with a team of scientists, programmers, and researchers in helping the scientific work on the Hubble data to occur faster by providing great research-quality data to the general astronomer audience in a fast and efficient way. This way, we hope to allow scientists to invest more time in uncovering the wonderful physical laws hidden behind the array of numbers.