Jeyhan Sevim Kartaltepe is an American astronomer, Associate Professor and Director of the

Rochester Institute of Technology The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in Henrietta, New York, a suburb of Rochester, New York, Rochester. It was founded in 1829. It is one of only two institute of technology, institut ...

Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. Her research considers observational astronomy and galaxy evolution. She is a lead investigator on the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey and the COSMOS-Webb Survey conducted on the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, Lis ...

Early life and education

Kartaltepe is from

San Antonio San Antonio ( ; Spanish for " Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the third-largest metropolitan area in Texas and the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the ...

. She studied physics at

Colgate University Colgate University is a Private university, private college in Hamilton, New York, United States. The Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York ...

, where she majored in astronomy and spent her free time using the 16-inch telescope on campus. She moved to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa for her graduate studies. She completed a master's degree in 2005, and embarked on a doctorate researching galaxies in the cosmos field. After earning her doctorate Kartaltepe was appointed a postdoctoral researcher at

National Optical Astronomy Observatory The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) was the United States national observatory for ground-based nighttime ultraviolet-optical-infrared (OUVIR) astronomy. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded NOAO to provide forefront astronom ...

, where she worked for two years before being made a Hubble Fellow. At the NOAO Kartaltepe investigated the interconnecting roles galaxy mergers and

active galactic nuclei An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that emits a significant amount of energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, with characteristics indicating that this luminosity is not produced by the stars. Such e ...

play amongst ultraluminous infrared galaxies.

Research and career

In 2015 Kartaltepe joined the

, where she is Director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. She was a founder of the

Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is the largest project in the history of the Hubble Space Telescope, with 902 assigned orbits (about 60 continuous days) of observing time. It was carried out between 20 ...

(CANDELS) collaboration. She is part of leadership of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey. CEERS is one of the first collaborations to conduct observations using the

, and looks to better understand the abundance of galaxies with

photometric redshift A photometric redshift is an estimate for the recession velocity of an astronomical object such as a galaxy or quasar, made without measuring its spectrum. The technique uses photometry (that is, the brightness of the object viewed through various ...

s between 3 and 9, as they were 11 – 13 billion years ago. Her other JWST project, COSMOS-Webb, surveyed a large patch of sky with a

Near Infrared Camera NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) is an instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope. It has two major tasks, as an imager from 0.6 to 5 μm wavelength, and as a wavefront sensor to keep the 18-section mirrors functioning as one. In other w ...

. It combined these data with mid-infrared images captured simultaneously. COSMOS-Webb looks to probe the first moments in which massive galaxies formed, and, using weak lensing, looked to map the dark matter distribution at early stages. It will help to identify the first fully evolved galaxies, which had stopped being active in the first two billion years after the

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

. COSMOS-Webb received the largest number of observation hours on JWST. Kartaltepe's first observations from COSMOS-Webb identified considerably more early galaxies than expected, indicating that the universe expanded faster than expected. Alongside her research, Kartaltepe is committed to science communication and outreach. She delivered a talk on the design of the

at the 2022

Falling Walls The Falling Walls Science Summit (previously Falling Walls Conference) is an annual science event in Berlin, Germany, which takes place from 7th to 9th of November and coincides with the anniversary of the Berlin Wall#Demolition, Fall of the Berli ...

Select publications

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References

Living people Educators from San Antonio Scientists from San Antonio Scientists from Texas Colgate University alumni University of Hawai{{okinai at Mānoa alumni Rochester Institute of Technology faculty American women astronomers 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American astronomers 21st-century American astronomers Year of birth missing (living people)