Welcome!
The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory near Amado, Arizona, U.S.A., is an observatory built to study gamma rays from extreme astrophysical phenomena in the Universe. VERITAS is now scanning the night sky searching for remnants of exploded stars, distant active galaxies, powerful gamma ray bursts, and evidence of mysterious Dark Matter particles. This website is here to help you join the exploration!
If you’re a student, teacher, collaborator, or just someone interested in the fascinating field of gamma-ray astronomy, you’ll find useful information, lesson guides, photographs, and other multimedia right here!
News
Meet a VERITAS Scientist!
Niklas Karlsson
Welcome to the third installment of "Meet a Scientist" for the VERITAS project. These articles will be updated periodically, so please check back often to find out about members of the VERITAS science team. Our interviewee is Dr. Niklas Karlsson of the Adler Planetarium. He spoke with Heidi Schmitt, an educator at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago, about his work on the VERITAS project.
HS: Where did you grow up? What were you interested in? Is anyone else in your family involved in a science career?
NK: I grew up in Tumba, a suburb south of Stockholm, Sweden. My family was a very typical middle class Swedish family. Although neither of my parents have academic training, they were always very encouraging and emphasized the importance of education. Both my sister and I now have PhDs, she in chemistry and I in physics. My father is a high school engineer who eventually started his own business, and my mother started out as a teacher but later made a career in school administration.
I used to play and build with LEGOs a lot as a kid, and I also had a fairly large model train setup. As most other scientists, I very much enjoyed reading about space, astronomy and, in my case, dinosaurs. When I was about 10 I got my first computer. This sparked my interest in computers and programming, which became my main hobby as a teenager. In high school, my interest in physics grew thanks to my math and physics teacher. I began to see the beautiful interplay between these two fields. After graduating high school in 1997, I continued to study physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. From there my career in physics took off, with a slight two-year detour as a computer programmer.
HS: When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
NK: I do not recall having one specific thing I wanted to do when I grew up. In high school, I wanted to work with computers. It was not until college that I started to think about working with science.
HS: What is your role for the VERITAS project? Specifically, what have you been working on in the past month for VERITAS? What do you do on a typical day?
NK: I am involved with many areas of VERITAS. My main role in VERITAS is to lead the offline-analysis working group. This group maintains and enhances a software package called VEGAS, which the VERITAS team uses to analyze gamma-ray data taken with the VERITAS telescopes. As the leader, it is my task to oversee the computer code development but also to contribute to the computer code myself. Currently I am working on implementing full support for the VERITAS Pointing Monitors in VEGAS. On a regular basis, I participate in operating the telescopes on site and perform calibration tasks.
A typical day for me begins with catching up with emails and messages from other members of the VERITAS team. The previous nights observing report is particularly important as it details what sources were observed and any problems that occurred during the night. I usually have a short chat with my supervisor, Dr. Geza Gyuk, when he comes in. We talk about things related to my research, recent exciting observations or solutions to technical problems. Every other day or so there is a phone conference with collaborators on various topics, ranging from the offline analysis package VEGAS to overall discussions on the weekly project call. The rest of the day is devoted to data analysis, running simulations and writing computer code. The latter takes up a lot of my time as most of the analysis work is done with computers.
The past month I spent at the VERITAS site, taking nightly observing shifts. This was my third time doing this. We experienced lots of frustrating problems, but these allowed me to learn more about the telescope systems.
HS: What's the best part of your job?
NK: It is a privilege to do what you love for a living. That in itself is the best part, I think. One of the perks of being a scientist with VERITAS is that I get to travel a lot, to Arizona for observing and to participate in science conferences and meetings around the world.
HS: What are some things about working in a science field that you know now but did not know when you were younger?
NK: I have come to realize how much you depend on otherŐs work and that they depend on you. This is not only true within a project or collaboration, but with science as a whole. Progress is made little by little, building and improving on ideas.
HS: What is your advice to students who would like to pursue a science career?
NK: I would urge them to follow their hearts and to study hard. There are no short cuts, but it is so much easier if you really enjoy what you are studying.
HS: What do you want to tell young people who may lack role models in science about your job?
NK: There are scientists who spend a portion of their time working directly with the public to educate them about their work who may be able to serve as science role models. Working at the Adler Planetarium I get to interact with the public thanks to our Astronomy Conversations program in the Space Visualization Lab.
HS: What are your hobbies? What do you like to do in your spare time?
NK: I am somewhat of a movie buff and I have a large DVD collection. I work out regularly, play golf in the summer time and I love skiing, although it has been a while since I last skied. Cooking is another favorite activity of mine, in particular on weekends. It is very relaxing.
HS: What do you think the future of space exploration will look like in 10 years?
NK: Predictions are always very tricky. I do not foresee any big leaps in the next decade, particularly since the space shuttle is being retired soon and there is no replacement in sight. We will probably not go back to the Moon or go to Mars, but I think we will be sending more exploration probes to Mars, other planets and their moons, and asteroids. There is still a lot to learn in our solar neighborhood.
