- Things I Have Been Doing
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Creating software tools for positional astronomy
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Creating and managing astronomical archives
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Bicycling everywhere
taking lots of photos
(for a long-time
activism, bikeways,
commuting, touring,
HPVs, skiing,
mountain biking, Tandems
Folding Tandems)
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Canoeing
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Cross-country skiing
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Singing in my church choir
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Going to plays at the Central
Square Theater, the Apollonaire Theatre Company,
the Huntington Theatre,
and the American Repertory Theater, among others
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Acting as one of the Women of Brook Farm
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Guiding tours of the Brook Farm State Historical Site,
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Serving on the board of New Brook Farm,
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Serving as Vice President of the Neponset River Greenway Council
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Going to the Theodore Parker Church (UU)
and teaching adult religious exploration
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Blogging at my own site, Trancyclist,
and at Women
in Astronomy
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Sharing and learning on Facebook
and Twitter: @MinkJessica
(for astronomy) and @BikesInSpace
(for everything else)
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Getting to Where I'm At
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Living in the Roslindale
neighborhood of Boston for
over 35 years, after
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Growing up outside of Dundee,
Illinois,
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Graduating in 1969 from Dundee
Community High School
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Going east to MIT to study
Comparative Planetology and Planetary
Astronomy graduating with a Bachelor's degree (*and a wedding
ring) in 1973, followed by a Master's a year later in 1974, learning
celestial mechanics by playing Spacewar
along the way.
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Helping discover the rings of Uranus with Jim Elliot and Ted Dunham while
working over 2 years at Cornell
University in Ithaca, New
York
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Returning with them to Cambridge,
Massachusetts to work 6 more years at MIT
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Working for the past 40 years as a data wrangler and software developer at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
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Writing the original graphics terminal emulator for xterm
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Creating two widely-used astronomical data analysis software
packages:
RVSAO to compute object radial velocities from theirspectra
and
WCSTools to map between image pixels and sky coordinates.
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Marrying and divorcing twice, but with a resulting daughter who's
also working on changing the world.
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Eventually becoming myself.
Last updated June 24, 2025 by Jessica Mink
