Raghvendra Sahai
Dr. Raghvendra Sahai is a Research Scientist at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute
of Technology, Pasadena. He came to JPL in 1992
as a Senior Resident Research Associate of the National
Research Council, and joined the JPL permanent staff
in 1995.
Sahai obtained his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1984
with a detailed millimeter-wave and infrared spectroscopic
study of the famous mass-losing carbon star, IRC
+10216. After a 2-year postdoc at the University
of Texas in Austin, Sahai went to the University
of Gothenburg/ Chalmers Instutute of Technology
in Gothenburg, Sweden. While continuing his work
on the mass-loss envelopes of dying stars like IRC+10216,
and teaching graduate and undergraduate courses
and supervising student research, Sahai began to
study molecular gas in planetary nebulae, using
the then newly constructed Swedish-ESO-Submillimeter
Telescope (SEST) in La Silla, Chile.
After almost 6 years in Sweden, Sahai returned
to the US in 1992. He became a member of HST's Wide
Field Planetary Camera 2 Science Team at JPL
in 1994, and started using HST to image proto-planetary
and planetary nebulae. Not only have the beautiful
images (examples)
obtained from this work significantly revised our
ideas of how planetary
nebulae are shaped, but they have also captured
the attention of the public at large. One of these,
the
Hourglass Nebula was selected to grace the cover
of National
Geographic (April 1997) and another, the Egg
Nebula is featured on a US postage stamp.
Aside from dying stars, Sahai's interests include
young stellar objects, brown dwarfs and extrasolar
giant planets (EGPs), and Seyfert galaxies. He has
participated in several studies related to the development
and use of a coronagraphic camera in space to find
EGPs around nearby stars.
Sahai describes his journey from a star-struck
youngster to a professional astronomer:
"If I had to choose one experience most responsible
for my life-long fascination with astronomy, it
would be -- (as a young boy) going to sleep on
the roof of our house during the hot summer nights,
watching the star-studded beauty of the Milky
Way house wheel across a pitch-black sky. During
my last year in high school (St. Joseph's Academy,
Dehradun, India), I was all set to follow in my
elder brother's footsteps and choose Electronics
Engineering as my major in college. My parents,
aware of my strong interest in science, encouraged
me to consider Physics instead - since at the
same time I also won a competitive science scholarship
covering all my college expenses at the Indian
Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT/K), I
elected Physics as my major. I applied for graduate
study in Physics at Caltech, got accepted, and
had decided to study elementary particles. But,
during my last semester at IIT/K, we were offered
a new elective course, entitled Radio Astronomy.
Our lecturer, Dr. N.C. Mathur, cleverly baited
us by offering a free tour of India's astronomy
facilities! I took the bait, and got hooked onto
astronomy for good."
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