Question: What problems do you solve?

Anna Scaife answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Hey Tad – I solve lots of different types of problems. Recently I’ve been working on developing a method to measure the magnetic fields in galaxy clusters using only information on the gas scattering. Normally people use the synchrotron emission (radiation from electrons spiralling around magnetic fields) to do this, but if you can’t detect the synchrotron emission then you’re stuck. So hopefully my new method will provide a solution to that.

Some of the other problems I solve are more down to Earth – like how to make images from radio data very very quickly using limited computational resources.

As an astronomer you have to do lots of different problem solving, not just the deep astrophysics, but how to get the right data to do the astrophysics, which means computer stuff and data analysis before you even get started!