Prof. CAROLYN PORCO, of the University of Arizona is interested in comparing processes
among the various planets of the solar system. Though she's our expert on Uranus, she's
really interested in rings (and other similar processes) in all the planets of the solar
system. A principal member of the Voyager spacecraft Imaging Team, she is delighted to be
part of the first human generation to be researching the outer solar system. A
self-avowed "e-mail fanatic" (see the first program) she's extremely interested in the
process of involving students in research.
In answer to the question, What made me want to become an astronomer anyway? Prof.
Porco says:
I actually became interested in astronomy through an interest in religion and Eastern
philosophy. I was at a very questioning stage in my early teen years, thirteen or
fourteen, I was going to a parochial school, Catholic school, I was having a lot of
religious concepts more or less shoved at me, and I was supposed, of course, to accept
them unquestioningly... I just started to think about religion in general, about
philosophy, I started to read existentialism and the whole thing ...and along with this
internal questioning I found myself one evening ...waiting for the bus to go home, this
is in the Bronx ...and I am waiting at the bus station and it's bedlam, it's rush hour,
it was dark, it was a Fall or Winter evening, there are cars and people rushing
everywhere and I just, you know, looked up and I saw a very bright object, I don't know
if it was Jupiter or if it was Sirius, but it was a very bright object, and I just
started to mull about this, and think about, you know, what was out there. And so my
thinking went from being very internally-oriented to being more externally-oriented,
and I started to read about planets and stars and galaxies and... and what the universe
contained as a whole.
...I also had a friend who was going through a similar thing, she had got a telescope
for Christmas, and she and I went to the top of her roof with the telescope and we peered
through it, and I don't remember if it was Jupiter or Saturn, actually, that we first
saw, but you would have thought we discovered it, it was so exciting... we hopped up and
down and hooted and hollered it was just one of those wonderful moments, kind of a
communion with the universe. So I came to the study of astronomy actually starting on
more or less a religious quest, and then it got diverted into a real interest in what
was out there and how I fit into things.
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