In this talk, astrophysicist Alex Filippenko describes the development of an automated supernova-search program at Lick Observatory, where a modest telescope repeatedly images thousands of galaxies and uses digital image subtraction to flag transient candidates. He explains how his research group, composed mainly of undergraduate and graduate students, evaluates these candidates, confirms genuine supernovae, and gains authorship on discovery telegrams. Filippenko uses this scientific workflow as a case study for broader lessons on building and motivating high‑performing teams: clearly defining roles, giving newcomers meaningful responsibilities, providing leadership opportunities, and rewarding contributions with public recognition and tangible perks (e.g., trips to Hawaii). He also details how he overcame the chicken‑and‑egg problem of securing telescope time by demonstrating capability with existing resources, taking calculated risks, and leveraging early successes to win access to world‑class facilities like the Keck 10‑meter telescopes. The narrative weaves technical details of the detection pipeline with practical management advice, illustrating how small‑scale innovation, persistence, and thoughtful incentives can drive both scientific discovery and team cohesion.
Chapters
Anyway, we have developed a telescope, an innovative telescope, just an hour and a half drive from here. I encourage you to visit Lick Observatory. It's in the hills east of San Jose. All right? This telescope is not big by today's standards, but it was programmed to take photographs of thousands of galaxies each week and to automatically compare the new pictures of a given galaxy with the old pictures. And usually there's nothing new, but sometimes there would be something new. And this was all done just beautifully by my associate, Weidong Li. He just did a masterful job at getting this system together. And here's an example of a before-and-after picture of a galaxy. And in the one on the right, you see that new thing, the arrow. Well, the arrow was put in with Adobe Photoshop or something, but the new thing is this little dude right there. And that's a supernova candidate. It might not be a supernova. It could be a charged particle that hit the detector and is masquerading as a supernova, or it could be some asteroid with Earth's name written on it heading for us. Someday, scientists, astronomers, together with engineers and entrepreneurs, will find a way to save the world, because we're going to find the asteroid decades before it hits, and then, you know, others will figure out a way to deflect it. So— Be kind to astronomers. Anyway, we would find maybe a few dozen candidates each night out of 1,000 images, and then I would use slaves— I mean, students— who, with their superior eye-brain combination, would examine the candidates and determine which ones are likely to be genuine supernovae worthy of follow-up observations. And I would get, you know, freshmen, sophomores involved in my research group, in a few cases even a high school student or two. And I would offer them real incentives, okay? They would really participate in the research. They would find these supernovae, confirm them. Their names would go on the telegram that was sent out to other astronomers. So, you know, this is an important point. Build and nurture a first-rate team in anything that you do, right? It takes teamwork, generally. It's very difficult now to do things completely alone. Clearly communicate. The roles and responsibilities of the team members. Give even new team members some significant role. Make them feel worthy and that they're really contributing in a material way to your project. Provide leadership positions, of course, to the more senior people. Right now, my senior supernova checker is about to graduate, so I've asked him to recommend to me who among the junior students should be the new— Checker. Senior leader, okay? And the baton, the torch, gets passed from year to year. Motivate them with important goals. Provide real value and career development, okay? And give them public recognition, okay? And incentives. They would be associated with these supernova discoveries. They'd write home to Mom about them. They'd say, look, Mom, I found this supernova. So, gave them a real feeling of participation and discovery. All right? Okay, going back, then, to the overall picture, We would find these ones. We'd calibrate them. We've been working on this for decades. The technique was known, you know, several decades ago. It's just that we've been refining it with our telescope recently. The challenge then is to find these little explosions. Well, they're big explosions, but compared to a whole galaxy, they might not be big. And when they're really far away, they're hard to find. So, you know, here's a picture of the sky taken with a big telescope, and there are literally thousands of galaxies there. Thousands of them. If you take a bunch of such pictures, you will have the mugshot of maybe 100,000 galaxies, all right, during the course of a night. 3 weeks later, you take pictures of the same galaxies, and some of them will have produced a supernova. The challenge is to find the needles in the haystack. How do you do that? People said, we're not going to be able to do that. You know? No way, folks. Well, we developed a way. We digitally subtracted the old images from the new images and developed a lot of software to do this subtraction really, really well. And here's the subtracted image, okay? There's a bunch of noise. That's okay. Any measurement process necessarily has some noise associated with it. But here, cleverly placed in the middle of this square, is something that looks like it might be real. And a Hubble picture of it a few weeks later confirms it. And then I would take spectra, and I confirmed them. So we did find a way to do it. But there was a chicken-and-an-egg problem. We would apply for time at observatories, saying that we would find these faint little supernova candidates. And the committees that would evaluate our proposals would say, ah, no, you can't. That's too hard. And they wouldn't give us the time. So if we don't get the telescope time, how can we demonstrate that we really can do it, right? Give us the time. So, I had time for other projects and stuff, and we snuck in some observations and showed that we could find supernovae. And then, we were able to apply for time and get it on a regular basis. But this, then, you know, is another lesson. Innovate. Take risks. Achieve the first steps of your goals with resources that you already have. By hook or by crook, by clawing and scratching, you know, find some resources with which you can demonstrate success and convert from skeptics to supporters, right? Suddenly, all sorts of people were saying, oh, man, these guys are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They can find these distant supernovae. Let's give them the time to do so. Maybe we'll learn about the fate of the Universe. But for years, they were all naysayers, and so we had to find some way to get the job done without yet having the approval of the community, right? Okay, so again, this is something that you can take away for whatever walk of life you choose to pursue. All right, so we found these candidates, and then we have to go and, you know, take their fingerprint, so to speak, with the greatest telescopes in the world, to which I have access, all right? And one reason I have access to them is I've I've worked hard and established my credentials using some, you know, doing some smaller projects and kind of work your way up to being the top person and being given access to the world's best facilities. You know, start by doing some smaller things and get them done well, and then you can move on to the big things. But these are the big guns here. These are the Keck 10-meter telescopes in Hawaii. Just fantastic things to use. Being up there and using the telescopes. And when I get really great data, then I'm a very happy camper. And now you see the real reason we build observatories in Hawaii. I find Bay Area waters to be too cold for swimming without a wetsuit. But there's good scientific reasons as well. Anyway, I would bring my students, you know, and we'd show up a day or two early, and hey, you know, we'd go to the beach, right? We're human too. We want to relax. We're going to be working hard the next few nights. Provide some incentives for your coworkers. You know, those students who did really well and were doing a good job and working really hard normally in Berkeley, hey, I'd take them to Hawaii with me and we'd spend a few days relaxing on the beach. So again, this is the kind of thing— additional perks, additional incentives can significantly improve morale and team productivity, right? And again, this is not just restricted to science. This is true Overall, right? You give people some incentives to work hard and they will. Give them the perks.
