Penn State Astronomy Student's Background in Music Helps him Appreciate the Beauty of Space

2010 Penn State graduate Emmanuel Fonseca. Credit: David Friedlander/NASA-GSFC

When Emmanuel Fonseca first told his mother he wanted to be a cosmologist, she asked, "Why would you want to do people's nails?" Now his family shares his excitement about how cosmological research will impact the world. They ask him about black holes and tease him with the question, "When are you going to take us to the moon?"

2010 Penn State graduate Emmanuel Fonseca, whose parents emigrated from Colombia to the Boston suburbs in the 1980s, said his decision to double major in astronomy and physics was something neither he himself nor his parents saw coming. Since the fifth grade, he had been passionate about music. By the time he entered high school, he had mastered the clarinet, the saxophone, and the electric guitar. But thinking back, he remembers how his fascination with the cosmos began -- when he was nine. The comet Hale-Bopp, dubbed the Great Comet of 1997, was visible to the naked eye for 18 months. Emmanuel remembers being mesmerized by the famous comet, and feeling the first inklings that he might want to study space. That desire stayed at the back of his mind through high school and his freshman year at Penn State. Then, the summer before his sophomore year, the allure of the cosmos seemed to reassert itself. "It was then that I realized I wanted to be an astronomer," Emmanuel said. "I didn't know exactly what an astronomer did; I just knew I wanted to do it." He immediately enrolled in Donald Schneider's Astronomy 291 class and set out to be an astronomer.

But Emmanuel's transition to astronomy was not a smooth one. "That year was the most challenging of my life," Emmanuel said, "I almost left astronomy. I had a major period of doubt." Despite earning very good grades, he found his faith in himself shaken by the sheer difficulty of Schneider's class. He also began to question the practicality of a career in astronomy. During the winter break after Astronomy 291, Emmanuel spent hours every day reading about astronomy careers in a soul-searching process he described as "needing to validate" his love of the field.

Paradoxically, it was the career that Emmanuel had left behind -- music -- that eventually helped him "validate" his pursuit of an astronomy career. "I finally realized that astronomy, in my mind, is a lot like music," Emmanuel said. "It matters because it's beautiful. Astronomy is really a creative science. You can't touch stars and galaxies, but you can know them in an abstract way." Emmanuel said this realization was his "defining moment," after which he enrolled in Astronomy 292 for the spring semester of his sophomore year. He has not looked back since.

Emmanuel's first opportunity to participate in research began in 2008. Under the direction of Penn State graduate student Jian Wu and Swift Satellite software engineer Scott Koch, Emmanuel wrote computer code to interpret data gleaned from the nuclei of active galaxies. Then, in 2009, Penn State astronomer and Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope's lead scientist Peter Roming recommended Emmanuel to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to help fix software complications that were slowing down researchers investigating the Omega Centauri globular cluster. Emmanuel immediately accepted, rejecting a competing offer from a Harvard University summer program in astronomy.

Emmanuel began a graduate program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada in the fall of 2010. After that, he is not sure whether he wants to teach, focus on research, or do both. He credits his Penn State professors with instilling in him an enthusiasm for both career paths. "Teaching keeps a person on his toes," Emmanuel said, "but it's also important to do research and push the theoretical envelope."