Rutuparna Das
Rutuparna Das is an astrophysicist and science communicator who spends her time learning about the universe and sharing its wonders with everyone around her. After going to undergrad at MIT, she completed her PhD at the University of Michigan, where she worked on weighing clusters of galaxies and figuring out what the cosmos is made of. She’s now at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, spreading the joys of space through NASA’s Universe of Learning, and continuing her research into the composition of the universe. When she’s not staring at the sky, she enjoys reading, crafting crazy desserts, taking an inordinate number of nature photos, and writing (sometimes silly) poetry about the cosmos.
About Rutuparna's Cosmic Creations
About Astrophotography: I've always loved looking closely at nature and capturing its wonders on camera, whether it's the slightly-squashed sphere of dew on a blade of grass surrounded by morning mist or the iridescence of a bumblebee's wings as it lands upon a flower. Once I started visiting remote mountaintops for astronomical observation runs, I was delighted to have the chance to capture the myriad colors of the stars floating through the inky night sky, and especially their movement through the night (as in the star trails photo). I love the fact that I can take images of distant clusters of galaxies through a large telescope *and* images of our nearby stars through my own camera – both in the same night!
About Astropoetry: I've written poetry about nature all my life. When I was younger, it used to focus more on leaves and flowers and the seasons, but as I learned more about the universe, it became one of my favorite sources of inspiration. Most recently, I've been writing poem/song parodies to celebrate new discoveries, or to just celebrate the act of observing the skies. It's great to take a step back from the coding and technical work that goes into analyzing astrophysical data, and to process these grand cosmic ideas in a lyrical way instead.
Ode to the Universe
(to the tune of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" from The Sound of Music)
You are 13 billion, going on 14 billion,
Cosmos it's time to think
Better expand,
Be faster than planned and Cosmos you're such a dream
You are 13 billion, going on 14 billion
Majestic and sublime
Postdocs, researchers,
PhD seekers
Will study your space and time
Just partly understood are you
so many questions remain
Dark Energy and Matter have you
Much things beyond our ken
You need someone
younger curious
exploring all your mysteries
We are humanity, just a few millennia old,
We'll keep searching your skies
On the Discovery GW170817
(language inspired by the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, content inspired by the universe)
Two neutron stars, both alike in degeneracy,
In fair NGC4993, where we lay our scene,
From ancient orbit break to new unity,
Where cosmic arms make cosmic stars combine,
From forth the starry skies of the Hydra Constellation
This pair of star-crossed crossing stars take their life;
Whose adventurous prodigious overthrows,
Do with their inspiral explode into gravitational and electromagnetic strife.
The fiery passage of their light-mark'd merger,
And the continuance of their emission of rays,
Which, but our telescopes worldwide, naught did intercept,
Is now the many weeks' traffic of our gaze;
And if we with patient eyes attend,
What this time we missed, with the next event shall strive to mend.