Jessica Sutter ’15 Shares the Beauty of the Stars

It was the beauty of the universe that first caught the attention of Jessica Sutter ’15 and ignited her interest in astronomy. 

When she was 11, Sutter took part in an astronomy camp hosted by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. On a field trip to the Pine Mountain Observatory outside Bend, Oregon, the campers got to look through telescopes.

“I remember seeing Albireo, which is a binary star system with two stars orbiting each other. One of them is bright blue, and one is more of a yellow-white,” she says. “I remember looking at that and thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I just wanted to keep doing that.”

And she did—through high school Science Olympiad events, through her Astronomy major at Whitman, through graduate school and postdoctoral fellowships with NASA and the University of California, San Diego, Sutter’s awe at the dazzling beauty of the universe has never faded.

Now this adventurous, outdoors-loving astronomer, who joined Whitman’s faculty in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy, is helping the next generation of stargazers find their passion for the cosmos.

Launching Into (the Study of) Space 

Back in her high school hunt for the right college, Sutter, originally from Portland, Oregon, had specific criteria in mind: a college in the Pacific Northwest with an Astronomy program, but not a big state school. Whitman turned out to be the perfect fit.

At Whitman, Sutter and her fellow Astronomy majors formed a tight-knit group, studying together and hanging out outside of class. She took every Astronomy course she could, but her favorite was Cosmology.

“I thought it was fun to ponder some of those very, very deep questions: How did the universe start? What’s its history? Where are we going?” she says. “It was a small classroom experience where we all got to interact with the professor while pondering these enormous questions that you don’t really get to think about in any other setting.” 

A summer research program introduced her to the study of distant galaxies and sparked her search for a graduate school with faculty doing similar research. That led her to the University of Wyoming, where she completed her master’s degree and doctorate. 

Galactic Love

Under the guidance of her graduate school mentor, Sutter began studying galaxies in the infrared, light that’s redder than the human eye can see. Infrared light helps reveal components of galaxies, such as gas and dust, which affect star formation. Sutter’s area of expertise is galaxies beyond the Milky Way. 

“What I love about it is that we get to do a lot of the fun parts of all the different branches of astronomy, because galaxies are made of stars, gas, dust and dark matter,” she says. “Plus, because the way we study the universe is by looking at galaxy distribution, we get to touch on the universe part of it too.”

It makes for some of the “prettiest data” in astronomy, she says. 

“Having my work be staring at these beautiful images of galaxies to see how the universe is growing and changing with time is just such an amazing opportunity," she says.

Inspiring Future Astronomers

In graduate school, Sutter realized that while she loved studying galaxies, she also was passionate about teaching. She’d been a Teaching Assistant for an astronomy lab at Whitman, so she had a better grasp on how to teach than many of her classmates. But more than that, she connected to the deeper purpose of teaching.

“I wanted to be not just someone who was doing science, but someone who was communicating the science they were doing,” she says. “I think it’s something that was helped by the fact that, while I was at Whitman, I was also taking English and humanities classes, and it wasn’t just science all the time. I had the skills that helped me fit in that space.”

Now in her second year of teaching at Whitman, Sutter is enjoying the challenge of engaging students and integrating her research work with teaching. 

“Things have changed in 10 years, but I feel like I can connect with these students in a special way because I have that past,” she says. “I like getting to sit down and do science with students who are super-excited about it and are willing to dig in and get messy.” 

Sutter is part of several inter-institutional research teams that meet regularly on Zoom. Working on the teams means that she has access not only to world-class telescopes, but also to some of the best new astronomical data available.

“I want to have my students learn about astronomy by actually doing it, by coming to these team meetings and getting to work with the data,” she says.

Last summer, Sutter worked with five students on a research project comparing archival and new measurements of gas in galaxies. Several joined Sutter this year at an astronomy conference to present the results of their research, and some will be co-authors on a paper she hopes to publish this year.

Through it all, Sutter keeps top of mind what first drew her to study the cosmos.

Studying astronomy “reminds me that we live in this incredible universe,” she says. “The fact that we are here at all is very, very cool, and so many random things had to happen for that to be the case. Getting to observe star-forming regions just gives you a lot of gratitude for the fact that we are here.”