The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Scott J. Wolk

Center for Astrophysics

Senior Astrophysicist/Flight Director

Scott J. Wolk

swolk@cfa.harvard.edu

About

I grew up in Northeast Ohio in the 1970’s, so I didn’t know a winning sports team until I moved to Boston in the mid-90’s. My research interests began in star formation, specifically the late time evolution of stars during the planet forming stage. This interest, coupled with my position as a Flight Director of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, led me to focus my work on X-ray emission from young stars in high mass clusters. This area of study is well suited to the high spatial resolution of Chandra. Most low mass stars emit copious X-rays for the first half billion years of their existence. Because of this, X-ray detections a better tracer of youth in stars than disks that are seen in the infrared for stars older than about 10 million years. More recently I have used the stars as giant X-ray machines to study the exospheres of exoplanets. I am leading the development of a small satellite, SmallSat Exosphere Explorer of hot Jupiters (SEEJ) which will be a mission devoted to this study.

Ph.D. (Stony Brook 1996)

Projects

ANCHORS

Star-forming regions are sources of intense radiation, from radio waves to X-rays. The ANCHORS (AN archive of CHandra Observations of Regions of Star formation) database documents over 10,000 X-ray sources in these regions of space, collected in the early 2000s by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This archive is managed by astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. ANCHORS is designed to be easy to use, allowing for sorting of data through a simple online interface.

The Star Formation Reference Survey

Optical and Infrared Astronomy

Astronomers study star formation as a way of understanding our own origins, as well as the structure of galaxies and the evolution of the cosmos as a whole. However, the farther back in time, astronomers often rely on a single measurement type for each galaxy to measure star-formation rates. The Star Formation Reference Survey (SFRS) is designed to improve and assess the reliability of all of these measurements by cataloging nearby star formation, using NASA’s Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope and other observatories. The data produced provides a useful reference data across a wide range of wavelengths in the spectrum of light, which can be applied across surveys of star formation in close-by and distant galaxies. The SFRS observational effort is led by astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in collaboration with other researchers around the world.

Telescopes and Instruments

Kepler/K2

Since the early 1990s, astronomers have identified thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Most of those identifications have come thanks to one observatory: NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Until it lost its ability to point, Kepler observed a region of the sky containing about 150,000 stars with potential planets, monitoring them for the slight decrease in light caused by planets crossing in front of the star. After the spacecraft’s pointing control failed, the mission was renamed K2, and it continued to hunt for exoplanets as it tumbled slowly, with its field of view drifting slowly across the sky. The mission finally ended in 2018, though the data it produced continues to provide astronomers with valuable information about planets in our galactic neighborhood. Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian were responsible for the preparation of the catalog for potentially interesting stars, and have participated extensively in follow-up observations of Kepler planetary discoveries.

Visit the Kepler/K2 Website

Chandra

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship X-ray observatory, providing essential data on everything from the environment surrounding newborn stars to the emissions from hot plasma inside galaxy clusters. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), as part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, manages Chandra’s day-to-day operations, providing spacecraft control, observation planning, and data processing for astronomers. Chandra is one of NASA’s orbiting Great Observatories, along with the Hubble.

Visit the Chandra Website

Lynx X-Ray Observatory

The Lynx X-ray Observatory is a proposed X-ray space telescope, designed to be the next generation following NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Athena Telescope. This observatory will be able to take images of a larger area of the sky in X-ray light with better resolution than any existing telescope, allowing astronomers to study the first supermassive black holes, the hot gas surrounding galaxies as they evolve, and radiation from the earliest stars. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and other universities are presenting Lynx to NASA for consideration in the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a proposed launch date in the mid-2030s.

Visit the Lynx X-Ray Observatory Website

Spitzer Space Telescope

Infrared light is the key to studying a wide range of astronomical systems, including newborn stars and planets, dust in distant galaxies, and material swirling around black holes. The Spitzer Space Telescope was NASA’s orbiting infrared observatory, and part of NASA’s Great Observatories program, along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists and engineers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian led the design, testing, and construction of the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in 2003 and retired in 2020.

Visit the Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC Page

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Extrapolating from that knowledge, the Milky Way alone is probably home to hundreds of billions of planets, many of which are likely rocky, Earth-like worlds. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space observatory designed to look for exoplanets in orbit around 200,000 nearby bright stars, with a particular interest in identifying small planets. Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian are part of the scientific team to analyze TESS data, as well as performing follow-up observations. The relative closeness of worlds in the TESS survey will allow astronomers to even study some of their atmospheres, using the future Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and other observatories. TESS observational program is complementary to NASA’s long-running Kepler/K2 mission, and could identify as many as 20,000 new exoplanet orbiting a wide variety of star types.

Visit the TESS Website

Arcus

The most powerful astronomical events are often very bright in X-rays, including supermassive black holes, the hot atmospheres of stars, and the extremely hot plasmas in and around galaxy clusters. Arcus is a proposed NASA space telescope designed to study the X-ray spectrum of a wide range of astronomical phenomena to a level of sensitivity higher than any previous X-ray observatory. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists are the leaders of the collaboration proposing Arcus. The mission proposal will be due in late 2023 and, if ultimately accepted, Arcus would launch in 2031.

See Arcus Website