astronomy

Laura Ferrarese

Laura Ferrarese is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Laura Ferrarese rather than just read about it. In short: Laura Ferrarese is a researcher in space science at the National Research Council of Canada. Her primary work has been performed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

Key takeaways

Laura Ferrarese belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Laura Ferrarese to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Laura Ferrarese from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Laura Ferrarese is a researcher in space science at the National Research Council of Canada. Her primary work has been performed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

Early life and career Laura Ferrarese was born in Padua, Italy and studied at the University of Padova, going on to receive a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1996. She was a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology before becoming a professor at Rutgers University in 2000. In 2004, she moved to the National Research Council (Canada), where she is now a Principal Research Officer. In July 2017, Ferrarese accepted a 16-month long appointment as Interim Director of the Gemini Observatory.

Research Laura Ferrarese's work has earned her the opportunity to spearhead projects using facilities such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Her work concentrates on the masses of supermassive black holes and the stellar velocity dispersions of their host galaxies, and how they affect each other. She has also researched active galactic nuclei, galaxy dynamics and scaling relations, the extragalactic distance scale and the expansion rate of the Universe. In her work, Ferrarese uses data from ground and space-based observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). According to the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System, she has published 177 peer reviewed papers, which have collected over 20,000 citations. Her h-index is 66. Ferrarese is currently a vice president of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and she is serving on the board of directors of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. From 2012 to 2014, she served as president of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA). Ferrarese has also served on the board of directors for the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and she has chaired the AURA Oversight Council for Gemini (AOC-G), among other appointments.

Teaching Ferrarese has taught at the University of Victoria, Rutgers University, Universitá di Padova, and SIGRAV School on Contemporary Relativity and Gravitational Physics.

Recognition and awards Ferrarese has won several awards, including the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal in 2012, the Helen Sayer Hogg Prize in 2014, and the Peter G. Martin Award in 2015. In 2020, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. On 30 November 2000, Ferrarese was featured in one of the episodes called "supermassive black holes" in the Horizon TV series.

Publications Ferrarese's most cited peer-review publications include:

"A Fundamental Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies", appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2000 "Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant", appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, 2001 "Central Masses and Broad-Line Region Sizes of Active Galactic Nuclei. II. A Homogeneous Analysis of a Large Reverberation-Mapping Database", appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, 2004 "Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past Present and Future Research", appeared in Space Science Reviews, 2005 "Beyond the Bulge: A Fundamental Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Dark Matter Halos", appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2002 "The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VI. Isophotal Analysis and the Structure of Early-Type Galaxies", appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2006

Affiliations Laura Ferrarese is an active member of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) and is affiliated with Division B Facilities, Technologies and Data Science, Division H Interstellar Matter and Local Universe and Division J Galaxies and Cosmology. She was a Past Member of Division VIII Galaxies & the Universe until 2012 and Commission 28 Galaxies until 2015 within the IAU. She is also a member of the American Astronomical Society and of the Canadian Astronomical Society.

See also List of women in leadership positions on astronomical instrumentation projects

References

External links External Webpage: "Laura Ferrarese". Herzberg Astrophysics. Laura Ferrarese at IMDb

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Laura Ferrarese

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Laura Ferrarese claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Laura Ferrarese before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Laura Ferrarese ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Laura Ferrarese

In research: Laura Ferrarese appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Laura Ferrarese in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Laura Ferrarese is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century Canadian women scientists, 21st-century Canadian astronomers, 21st-century Canadian women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Laura Ferrarese outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Laura Ferrarese in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Laura Ferrarese means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Laura Ferrarese out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Laura Ferrarese in simple terms?

Why does Laura Ferrarese matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Laura Ferrarese?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Laura Ferrarese.