Astronomer Reveals Her Path Through the Stars

Jessica Adkins, staff writer

On Tuesday, Oct. 22, Whitney Richardson gave an intriguing presentation on what it is like to be a telescope operator.

Walking into room 210 in the Keats Science Building, one could see the energetic yet nervous blue-haired astronomer. On the opening slide of her presentation, she had a statement that said, “Resume is 3 pages long.” When asked if her resume was actually three pages long, she said, “No, it is longer. The three pages consist of only the jobs I have done.”

Richardson grew up in Eastern Kentucky with five siblings. She had several jobs before she decided she wanted to work on telescopes. She worked at two movie theaters, was a tour guide for Lost River Cave, worked customer service at Shutterbug Photography studio, and was an electrical dispatcher for Bowling Green Municipal Utilities. While in high school, she was part of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Program, and it was while participating in that program that she decided she wanted to help fix telescopes.

After high school, Richardson “went to Western Kentucky University and was the first student to get an astronomy minor at WKU,” she said. While working with telescopes, she also discovered a binary star system.

Richardson has worked at many observatories. She worked as a telescope technician at Bell Observatory and had to get the telescope up and running after a lightning strike hit it. She worked on the one meter telescope at Fan Mountain for five years and was able to do so with soft grant money.

While working at the Fan Mountain Telescope, she was able to collect data for the SIM satellite project which was canceled. After that, she worked at Mt. Graham Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in New Mexico, which sizes at 1.8 meters. To keep the ground vibrations from messing up the readings, the telescope building actually floats on a pool of oil, according to Richardson.

Richardson currently works as a fiscal technician for University of Virginia.

Richardson was brought in by the Science Club to partake in the monthly Science Career Talk series that they host. The next talk will be Nov. 12.