Lisa Frattare

Hi, I’m Lisa Frattare. I’m an image processor for the Hubble Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute. I’m American and I work for a company called AURA which works for NASA. As a child aged 6 or 7 I remember watching the moon moving across my bedroom window and seeing Jupiter. It was in college that I decided to be an astronomer, this happened after I took an observational class and at dusk I saw some of the planets. I can still remember being there, up on the roof now.

For my first degree I majored in psychology and minored in astronomy. I bought myself a Celestron 8inch telescope in my 3^rd year at university but years later it was stolen. I then went on for other degrees in Physics and Astronomy. I have 2 children, a girl aged 5 called Payson, after a city in Arizona, and a boy aged 3 called Austin. One particular thing that I like about my job is being able to go to places like Chile and Hawaii to use the telescopes that they have out there. I’ve been involved with about 100 orbits worth of Hubble time through various proposals and projects. My favourite Hubble image is of the Keyhole Nebula.

See my homepage: http://www-int.stsci.edu/~frattare/