Merieme Chadid
Merieme Chadid (Arabic: مريم شديد; born 11 October 1969 in Casablanca) is a Moroccan-French astronomer, explorer and astrophysicist. She leads international polar scientific programs and has been committed to installing a major astronomical observatory at the heart of Antarctica.
Quotes
[edit]- Right in the heart of the Antarctic continent, in one of the coldest, most deserted and inaccessible places in the world.
- This is a unique place where prevailing conditions are of extreme cold, isolation, and where it is night several months of the year. It then becomes possible to observe the stars on a continuous basis.
- There is no soul that lives less than 1,000 miles away. The place is located at 3200 meters, but the weather is as if we were at 4000 meters. Installing an observatory in such an environment resembles a space mission in that we must check all the atmospheric parameters (turbulence, transparency, scintillation (twinkling), aurora, etc.).
- Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences in the world. It is the study of all extraterrestrial objects, that is, those existing outside the Earth or its atmosphere, such as the solar system that consists of our star, the sun, and the objects that orbit it, the Moon, galaxies, planets and comets.
- Astronomy also investigates and explains the origin and evolution of the phenomena associated with such objects, like supernova explosions, gamma rays, quasars, blazars, pulsars and cosmic microwave background radiation.
- Astronomy was used to measure time, mark seasons and navigate oceans based on predictions about the positions of the sun, the Moon and the planets, while stars have helped people to navigate the Earth by lighting up the night.
Hakima El Haite was asked: What are the current challenges in astrophysics, particularly in stellar physics and asteroseismology — the field that studies variations in the brightness and pulsations of stars?
[edit]- In this case, regardless of the mirror’s size—whether 39, 100, or even 200 meters—a ground-based telescope cannot solve the fundamental problem in asteroseismology: the detection of certain pulsation modes that remain unobserved. The limitation arises from the alternation of day and night. For instance, even with the largest ground-based telescopes, such as the VLT, observations can only be made at night. This daily interruption creates gaps in the data, meaning that when we record a star’s brightness over time—its light curve—we obtain an incomplete sequence, marked by interruptions caused by the Earth’s rotation.
Interview with Merieme Chadid, Astrophysicist and Research Director at (CNRS)] On March 30, 2023
