María Teresa Ruiz González
Early Life
Maria was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1946. She fell in love with astronomy after attending a summer school about it. She went on to study astronomy in Chile and was the first person to graduate from this program in 1971. Ruiz earned her PhD in Astrophysics in 1975 and became the first woman to earn a PhD from Princeton.
Career highlights
Maria held a research post at the Trieste Observatory between 1975 and 1976 while doing her PhD. She also worked for two years at the Institute of Astronomy at UNAM in Mexico.
Year born: 1946
Research Areas: Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets
Pair the Stages of a Star
Though they shine for many thousands, and even millions of years, stars do not last for ever. They ignite, burn, and then run out of fuel and go out.
Can you match the images of each stage of a star's existence to the correct description?
Identify the Nebula
The word nebula is used to talk about any dusty, fuzzy objects in space but they can be very different things! Can you classify each image into its proper category?
Order the Stages of a Star
During their lives, stars undergo massive changes. What happens to them depends on how much mass they contain.
Can you put the stages that a low mass star and a high mass star will go through in the correct order on the diagram?