Nebraska native explores galaxies far, far away

Growing up on a small farm in Nebraska, Megan Donahue ’85 discovered the wider world by reading her way through her local library. Today, she is learning how the wider universe works by studying galaxy clusters.

Donahue discovered her passion for physics in that library at age 12 and started her path into astronomy thanks to “a providential interaction.” Through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, she got introduced to cutting-edge x-ray imaging—work she found “really cool.”

Now a professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, she researches galaxy clusters and baryonic matter (matter made of protons and neutrons, as opposed to dark matter) in an effort to learn more about the composition of the universe and its evolution.

“Clusters of galaxies are very large scoops of the universe,” says Donahue, who served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 2018 to 2020. “It’s like taking a sample from the ocean. If you’re trying to find out the average composition of the ocean’s water, you’d want to study as big a scoop as possible.”  

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