Interview with Christopher Duffy

Researcher at Department of Physics, Lancaster University

 

What is your current role within the ESA Euclid mission?

"I am a member of the supernova and transient science working group, where we are trying to use Euclid to detect transients of things that vary in the night sky. In some cases that means following up on transients that have been detected by other surveys, but we are also triying to use the Euclid deep fields with multiple visits to find transients that no one else has been able to find by using Euclid data."

Have there been any unexpected findings or surprises in the ESA Euclid mission so far?

"I'm not sure we would call them unexpected because we have been talking for years about how great Euclid data was going to look, so I think we have met expectations. I think, the first time we saw some of the transients in the images or our galaxies in detail and went 'Oh, I can tell exactly which spiral arm that supernova went off in', was not surprising, but it was definitely really good to see. It made us all feel proud that we were working on something that was going to be very good."

What part of the Q1 data release and your own research are you most excited about?

"I think the bit that is most exciting is Euclid's ability to go really deep and see really faint things. In transient science as we are looking for objects that explode and then get fainter - the objects are only there for so long, and a lot of them, you could be only seeing for one or two months from Earth. Whereas with Euclid, because we can see the objects much fainter, we can stay with them much longer as they get fainter, or sometimes we can even catch them earlier, then we will be able to see them as they are exploding.
So, I think that is a really exciting thing - being able to see these distant or really faint supernovas, which confirms the picture we have been drawing saying 'pretty sure it will do this, as that is what the math says'. And it is very good to be able to see that it actually does do that."

Based on the knowledge you have now from the Q1 data release, what are your main expectations from Euclid in the future?

"That we are going to have an awful lot of data, and that we are going to be very very busy for the next couple of years going through it.
I think we have found that Euclid can do transient science and that it can do it very well. We expect that there are a lot of interesting transients that we don't know a lot about. There is even 10 or 20 of them never seen before, because they are just really difficult to catch. They are really distant objects, and Euclid is perfectly set to catch them. So, I think, as we move into the future data releases, we are going to see these objects and then it gets really, really exciting, and we are also going to be very busy."

Do you have any advice for people who would like to use Euclid data?

"Well now that the data is out, you can just go and poke it with a stick, and that is the best thing to do when new data from telescopes comes out. Just go and look at it and see what interesting things you can find.
If you want to follow it as a career, I think persistence is the best one. You don't always get yes, the first time, and if you want to do it, you have to stick with it, but don't let that knock you back. Don't always think that you have to be the smartest person in the room. Just because you didn't do great in that one exam, that one time, doesn't mean that the door is closed. You just have to find a different way to it. If it is what you love and it is what you want to do, then just keep trying and that passion will get you there more often than not. Because at the end of the day, astronomy is a passion project, and you've got to want to do it, because it is a challenge sometimes, and sticking with it is the most important thing, I think."

 

 

For further details on Christopher Duffy's work on the photometric studies of known transients, please refer to the following scientific paper published in arXiv:

For more information about the Euclid Q1 release, visit the ESA press release: