DR TANA JOSEPH
THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT, THE UNIVERSE IS We are all made of star stuff!
“
I wish you’d taught me science when I was in high school! Maybe I would have enjoyed it!” These were my part-
ing words as I walked out of Dr Tana Joseph’s office in the Astronomy department at the University of Cape Town. Tana holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics and MSc in Astrophysics and Space Science from UCT; where she is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on multi-wavelength studies of high energy binary systems.
Dr. Tana Joseph
Just saying what she does is enough to scare any young person away from
It all began with the Hubble Space
“I wanted to be an astronaut; but back then
Astronomy but the way she explained it
Telescope. In 1994, at the age of 10, Tana
you could only become an astronaut if you
made it easier to understand.
kept seeing beautiful pictures of space
were American or Russian. So the Hubble
taken with the Hubble Telescope in the
pictures made me realise that I still loved
newspapers.
space and I could actually do astronomy.”
optical light but radio, gamma, x-rays and
“My dad used to buy the Cape Times
One thing that really made her follow her
there are all these different types of tele-
[newspaper] and I would cut out the pic-
dream was the fact that her parents were
scopes that can detect each type of light,”
tures and put them in my scrap book!” she
very supportive. It makes sense though,
she explains.
enthuses.
because both her parents were science
“So, multi-wavelength means looking at stuff with different types of light; not just
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