Oregon High School Class of 2016 Cameren Swiggum has already been around the world, though his recent work is taking him to the stars and beyond.
He was the lead author on an article that was recently published in Nature, one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journals, on star formation, and scientists’ ability to trace those back in time, not unlike tracing a family’s history.
Swiggum is a member of an international team of astronomers at the University of Vienna, Austria, that has uncovered the origins of star clusters using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. By tracing the motions of hundreds of young star clusters backward in time, they discovered that the majority of these clusters are part of one of three families that formed in past sites of massive star formation over 30 million years ago.
The Observer recently chatted with Swiggum about his recent research, and also how he got interested in the sciences, thanks to some of his teachers at the Oregon School District.
Q&A with Cameren Swiggum
Did you have any teachers at OHS who were instrumental in your advancement in math and science and/or interest in astronomy?
I remember becoming interested in physics during Mr. Mahr’s science class at OMS. My enthusiasm for physics and astronomy grew even more through Mr. Fishwild and his physics course at OHS. In relation to scientific writing, Mr. Nedelcoff’s US History course taught me to “answer the blessed question!,” (as he would put it) when writing on a subject. I think this is an important lesson, as it’s important for a scientist to clearly explain our work to the scientific community and later to the public instead of clouding our results with jargon.
What was your path from UW to the University of Vienna, and studying star formation?
I did a few undergraduate research projects during my BSc. One of them was with Professor Elena D’Onghia at the UW Madison Department of Astronomy. I ended up publishing my first paper with her and Professor João Alves, an astronomy professor here in Vienna, on the expansion of star clusters in the heart of the Orion star-forming region
(iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac0633#apjac0633f2). Afterwards, João invited me to come to Vienna to do a PhD in his research group, which has been an amazing experience these past three years.
Is this your first lead authorship on a big article like this? What’s the process in submitting those to publications like Nature?
I’ve been the lead author on a few studies already, but this was my first time (and maybe my last!) leading a Nature paper. Publishing in Nature is similar to publishing in other Astronomy journals; you and your co authors submit the article, then it is sent by the editor of the journal to one or two other Astronomers in the same sub-field. They will then read and assess the validity of your science (the peer review process).
Nature is different in that it covers many areas of science and it is usually difficult to pass the journal editor, who often rejects the article before it is sent for peer-review if they don’t think the result is interesting enough. This means you first need to have a ground-breaking result and you need to be lucky and hope the editor finds your manuscript interesting. Then, like any scientific journal, you have to make it through the peer reviewers next. If all goes well, your article will be accepted for publication.
How would you briefly sum up what you’ve been working on, in terms of using Gaia mission data to go back in time to find the original star “families” – kind of like star genealogy?
In Vienna, our group is interested in the process of star formation. That is, how do diffuse clouds of gas collapse to later form stars and planets? Stars mostly form in clusters — The major advantage with the Gaia space telescope is that it has the precision to measure the 3D positions and motions of star clusters many light-years away from the Sun. If you put a quarter on the Moon, Gaia could resolve it here from Earth!
“Star cluster genealogy” is a good way to put it! In the end we are interested in the younger star clusters.
What kinds of astronomical matters are you interested in pursuing in the future?
I mostly study our own Milky Way, but I’m interested in connecting these results to studies of other galaxies. The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed amazing images of external spiral galaxies where you can see very clearly the way supernovae explosions have shaped their large scale structure. We don’t have this broad view of our own Galaxy since we are embedded within it, but it is the only galaxy where we can study a relatively small part (near the Sun) of its 3D structure and dynamics in great detail. So combining these two views to gain a better understanding of how galaxies get their shapes and form their stars is what I’m interested in, in the long run.
Any advice for young students thinking about a career in astronomy or the sciences?
My advice to anybody considering a career in astronomy is that if you have enough curiosity and drive, you will find yourself loving the subject and the field of astronomical research. My word of caution is that there are many more people that have this curiosity and drive for astronomy than there are permanent job positions in astronomy, so competition is fierce.
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