Follow a day in the life of an astronomer searching for planets beyond our solar system as she explains how she observes Ramadan and celebrates her family’s traditions. Astronomer, astrophysicist, and National Geographic Explorer Munazza Alam is the daughter of a Pakistani father and Indian mother, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Earth & Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C., focusing on exoplanets. She also shares insights from co-hosting Nat Geo’s How We Explore podcast, which introduces kids to the work of National Geographic Explorers around the world.
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TRANSCRIPT
MUNAZZA ALAM (ASTRONOMER): Exoplanets are planets outside of the solar system, and we know today for the first time ever with statistical certainty that there are more planets in the Milky Way galaxy than there are stars. Each star hosts at least one planet.
DAVAR ARDALAN (HOST): That’s astronomer and astrophysicist Munazza Alam.
ALAM: For centuries, philosophers had been postulating that there are many worlds out there in the universe, many of which are like our own.
ARDALAN: Today as part of her scientific work on exoplanets, she uses data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii and the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
ALAM: So centuries ago, when Galileo was looking at the moons of Jupiter through his telescopes, he was looking through the eyepiece of those instruments. Today we are using much more powerful telescopes at national observatories that are the size of a school bus. And so we aren’t looking through the eyepieces of those instruments, but instead we are operating several computers that are connected to the telescope in what’s called the telescope control room, and that is how we control where the telescope is pointing, what it’s looking at, and for how long.
ARDALAN: I’m Davar Ardalan and you’re listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. This week our guest is National Geographic Explorer Munazza Alam, a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Coming up: what it’s like stargazing for the next Earthlike planet. Plus, what the month of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, means to Munazza and her family.
ALAM: So I was born and raised in New York City, but my family is South Asian. My mom is from India, and my dad is from Pakistan. So a lot of the traditions that we have during Ramadan are based in South Asian foods or typical South Asian traditions for Ramadan. For example, we eat a lot of pakora—kind of fried, gram flour fritters—and fruit chaat, which is a mixed fruit, kind of in a tasty liquid of juices. Iftar is when we break the fast at sunset.
ARDALAN: We’ll hear all about Munazza’s work with stars, her Ramadan traditions, and how she embraces the predawn meal of sahar, suhoor, or sehri right after the break.
But first, fuel your curiosity with a free one-month trial subscription to National Geographic Digital. You’ll have unlimited access on any device anywhere, ad-free, with our app that lets you download stories to read offline. Explore every page ever published with a century of digital archives at your fingertips. Check it all out for free at natgeo.com/exploremore.
ARDALAN: It’s the month of Ramadan, and as a practicing Muslim, you observe this tradition of fasting. So I’ll say Ramadan Mubarak.
ALAM: Khair Mubarak.
ARDALAN: And what does Ramadan mean to you?
ALAM: To me, Ramadan means family. It means faith. It means food. And it’s a tradition that keeps me rooted in me and who I am and where I come from, no matter where I go.
(Sound of Alam filling up a teakettle)
ARDALAN: So a few weeks ago, we asked you to keep an audio diary during Ramadan, and we’re going to hear the first clip, which begins before sunrise, when you rise to prepare for the fast. There are many different ways of describing this predawn meal. Some would pronounce it as sahar, suhoor—I believe you pronounce it sehri. Tell us a little bit more about that before we hear the clip.
ALAM: So I would say sehri because I am South Asian and my family speaks Urdu, but in Arabic it’s called suhoor. And you say sahar because you speak Farsi. So this is a word that has an Arabic root, but in languages that have many words that are derived from Arabic, like Farsi and like Urdu, the words are similar but slightly different. So that’s why we have slightly different words for the same thing.
ARDALAN: So let’s listen to the first clip.
(Alam audio diary)
It is 4:30 a.m. on the first day of Ramadan, and we are getting ready for our sehri predawn meal. On the menu for today is keema, roti, and tikki anda—so that’s ground beef, flatbread, and a sunny-side up egg prepared by my lovely mother. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to go back to bed after this meal, so I haven’t made my bed yet. But let’s see what the day brings.
ALAM: Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar that has 354 days. Because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, it’s slightly shorter than our solar calendar, which is 365 days. And so because of this difference of about 10 or 11 days, the month of Ramadan does not fall at the same time each year. So some years it’ll fall in the summertime, others in the winter, and that’s kind of helpful, especially if you’re fasting in the heat of July. But the tradition during this month is that Muslims around the world are going to fast for this full month, which is about 29 or 30 days. And the fasting for each day takes place from sunrise to sunset. And the practice is that during the day Muslims will abstain from food and drink. So no water and no meals at all. So only meals before dawn and after sunset.
ARDALAN: When it comes to fasting, Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes that the fast “bestows a spiritual perfume upon the human soul whose fragrance can be perceived long after the period of abstinence has come to an end.” That ultimately “it is only a certain degree of restraint from the material objects of the senses that makes…the senses balanced.” One such practice of restraint is fasting during the month of Ramadan.
I grew up with Seyyed Hossein Nasr and his family. He was my late mother, Laleh Bakhtiar’s, teacher. Throughout my life, my understanding of the premise of Ramadan comes through Laleh’s work on Quranic psychology—that Ramadan is grounded in spirituality, setting goals, and a drive towards growth and transformation. That is, not to accept prescribed fasting only as a religious duty but rather a challenge, as a chance for growth instead of an experiment which limits one’s self.
If you were to step back and think about the bigger picture of Ramadan, it’s also a commemoration of the story of the Quran, which is the sacred text of Islam being revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
(Laleh Bakhtiar reads from The Sublime Quran.)
LALEH BAKHTIAR: Chapter 13: Thunder.
ARDALAN: That’s my mom, Laleh Bakhtiar, reciting from The Sublime Quran.
(Laleh Bakhtiar reads from The Sublime Quran.)
BAKHTIAR: It is He who exalted the heavens without any pillars so that you see them. Then He turned his attention to above the throne and He caused to become subservient the sun and the moon, each running for a term that was determined. He manages the command. He explains distinctly the signs so that perhaps of the meeting with your Lord you would be certain. And it is He who stretched out the earth and made on it firm mountains and rivers.
(Alam audio diary)
All righty, it is midday, about 1:30 p.m., and I’m feeling OK, feeling good. Definitely not that hungry or thirsty, surprisingly, but I didn’t go back to sleep this morning after sehri so I’m feeling like a nap is definitely going to be in my future. Just had a productive morning. I read the first sipara of the Quran, and I took a walk with my sister and then started my workday and just started crossing off tasks.
ARDALAN: What are some of the prayers that you share during Ramadan, or how important is the role that prayer has during the month?
ALAM: So during the month Muslims are encouraged and expected to spend more time in worship and in prayer. So one of the things that I try to do is to read the Quran—to complete one recitation of the Quran, which is long, but it’s split into 30 siparas or parts. And so one thing that I try to do is read one part each day. So that is an extra thing that I do, and then on the weekends, we go to the mosque to break the iftar or to break the fast. And we read the Taraweeh prayers, which are a longer set of optional prayers that are said during the month of Ramadan.
ARDALAN: And what is it like balancing your career as a scientist and fasting for 29 days, where before—you know, you wake up before sunrise and eat something and then you don’t drink or eat until after sunset?
ALAM: I think that it can get challenging at times. I remember I first started fasting for the full month when I was about 18 years old, and it was the end of high school, beginning of college. And sometimes if I had exams, I noticed I was a little bit more focused on some days and a bit less focused on others. It kind of depends on what you eat in the morning and how that sustains you for the rest of the day. I think for me, after a few days I get used to not drinking and not eating during the daytime. But the thing that gets worse over time is waking up early and staying awake late. So the lack of sleep is the thing that I think gets me the most.
ARDALAN: We’re going to listen to another audio clip.
(Alam audio diary)
ALAM: We broke the fast with dates from Mecca that someone brought back from a recent trip and pakora or fried, gram flour fritters with spinach and potatoes and onions that were very tasty. I was definitely very grateful for that meal.
ARDALAN: You mentioned earlier iftar, and that is when the day of fast ends at sunset. What is iftar and how do you break your fast?
ALAM: So iftar is the meal that we eat to break our fast after sunset, and traditionally we eat a date—the fruit—and have a glass of water to break the fast. And then after that, we have a bit of an iftar kind of snack. Since my family is South Asian, we have pakora, which are fried gram flour fritters, and we can make them of different types either with potatoes or with onions or spinach or some combination of all of those. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. And we have fruit chaat, which is kind of a mix of different fruits with some guava paste and some tasty juice. And that’s kind of the snack that we have first. And then we will break to say our Maghrib or sunset prayers, and then we’ll come back for dinner. And dinner is kind of dictated by our cravings throughout the day.
ARDALAN: Oh, interesting. Yeah. How about tea or halwa? Is that a South Asian tradition?
ALAM: So tea is definitely a big one, and that’s usually a post-dinner thing—some odd switch where we caffeinate at night. But we will have some halwas, different types we have, like gajar ka halwa, which is like a carrot sweet. There’s also kheer, which is more like a rice pudding, but we don’t have that every day. We try to be a little bit healthy.
ARDALAN: And Ramadan itself ends with Eid, one of the most important holidays for Muslims. Tell us a little bit about Eid al-Fitr, how I would pronounce it. And that comes this year towards the end of April.
ALAM: Yes. So the holiday that ends—that Ramadan ends with is called Eid al-Fitr, that’s how we’ll say it in Urdu. And it’s a celebration of the end of the month of Ramadan. And one of the things that is important to highlight—this is one of two Muslim holidays. The other one is called Eid al-Adha, and that is actually the bigger holiday. But Eid al-Fitr gets more attention, I think, because it’s more visible or noticeable when colleagues are not eating lunch or drinking water during the workday. So I think that’s why Eid al-Fitr is a bit more popular, but it’s actually the smaller holiday.
ARDALAN: Talk a little bit about the spiritual dimension of Ramadan when you’re fasting, a time to contemplate, you know, the purpose of life. You could be very self-reflective and think about your place in the universe, and it’s a kind of interesting moment to pause and not only think about some of the more materialistic sides of life.
ALAM: Yeah, that’s another big thing with fasting. It’s not just giving up food and drink and kind of physical pleasures. There is also the aspect in giving something up, how do we reflect on what we have and who we are and what our habits are and our place in the universe?
ARDALAN: The famous philosopher Muhammad Al-Ghazzali wrote of Ramadan some 800 years ago, famously noting that attachment to this world to an extent which goes beyond moderation holds the believer back because excessive attachment to the world increases the passions like lust and anger and reduces the possibility of the eternal preservation of self.
ARDALAN: So let’s now focus on your current research. You focus on detecting and characterizing exoplanets. You’ve talked about how you use space-based and large ground-based telescopes. That sounds like so much fun, so maybe just tell us what an average day is like for you.
ALAM: So most of the days during the year, I don’t have a glamorous job. I sit at my desk, at my computer, and analyze data that is taken from telescopes. A couple of times a year, I get to go observing myself, to observatories in exciting places like the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile or the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii. And that’s where I think I really get to feel like a proper observational astronomer. So I flip my days where I stay up at night and I sleep all day, and when I stay up all night, I am working in the telescope control room, working on basically a wall of computers that are telling the telescope exactly where to point and what to observe and for how long.
These are the days where I’m reminded what it means to be an astronomer. Because when I work with space-based data, that data is taken on a queue. So it’s scheduled beforehand—and the telescope is in space, so we don’t travel to the telescope—but the data basically comes in and then because it’s in space, it’s observing all the time. So data is constantly being taken and being downlinked to Earth where we can then download our data and get cracking, analyzing it. And so I think that having the combination of working with space-based data and ground-based data keeps me rooted in that feeling of actually going kind of classically or traditionally observing at observatories.
ARDALAN: Amazing. Let’s say it’s one of the days where you’re working with the telescopes and you are looking for that Earthlike planet. What is the science behind what you look for?
ALAM: Yeah, so what we’re looking for when we make these observations is—so first off, we time them very carefully. We time these observations very carefully so that they occur when the planet is passing in front of or transiting its host star from our line of sight here on earth. So when the planet is transiting its star or in front of its star, we can’t actually see the planet itself because these systems are so far away and the star is much, much brighter than the planet itself. It’s a little bit like trying to look at a firefly next to a bright streetlamp. You won’t be able to see it because it’s so small and not as bright. So we make these combined light observations where, when the planet is in front of the star, it’s going to cast a shadow on the star. And so if we measure the brightness of the star over time, we will record a little dip in the brightness of the star that corresponds to when the planet is passing in front of it.
ARDALAN: Really interesting. What other data points are you looking for when you look for that Earthlike planet? The atmosphere—?
ALAM: Yeah. So we can take the transits one step further and learn about the atmospheres of those planets by observing transits at different wavelengths or colors of light. Because depending on what wavelength you’re looking at, the planet’s atmosphere can appear more or less opaque. And since we can’t see the planet, what this translates to is the shadow that the planet casts might be a bit larger where the atmosphere is more opaque and a bit smaller where the atmosphere is less opaque. So this roughly translates to changes in the size of the planet at different colors of light. And when we break that down, the wavelengths where the planet’s atmosphere is more opaque correspond to absorption from atoms and molecules that are present in the atmosphere of the planet. So we can make these observations and learn not only what the atmosphere is made of—what atoms and molecules—we can also learn if there are clouds or hazes in the atmosphere of the planet.
ARDALAN: So when you have a break and are watching a Star Wars movie and you’re seeing what all of Hollywood depicts these exoplanets look like, is that what it looks like?
ALAM: So this is interesting because we’ve done some—especially for like press releases and kind of public engagement—worked with graphic designers to visualize what these worlds would look like. Because from these observations, we have discovered some pretty exotic planets in our galaxy. I’m talking planets with raindrops made of corundum, which is the material that rubies and sapphires are made of. So these kind of ruby raindrop planets. We’ve discovered planets that have—that might rain, like, molten glass. So they sound like science fiction worlds, but they exist within our own galaxy. And we’ve measured their compositions and know what their atmospheres are like. And so depending on how bright the planet is, you may have, like, a magenta sky or a purplish sky. And it’s just crazy to think about how different these exoplanets are compared to the worlds within our solar system.
ARDALAN: Absolutely. So Munazza, that means we’re going to need a lot more National Geographic Explorers to find all of these planets, right?
ALAM: Absolutely. We’re realizing—the field of exoplanets is growing and growing, and we’re realizing that this is necessary because we’re getting so much data with so many rich things to look into. Yeah, and we definitely need more explorers out there.
ARDALAN: When I went back and I was talking to you earlier, you talked about during your Ph.D. thesis at Harvard, you primarily used the Hubble telescope to get your data, and you were actually saying that so much changed just a year later when the James Webb telescope was put into use. Tell us a little bit more about your research and how this new telescope is changing the landscape.
ALAM: So my research focuses on studying the atmospheres of exoplanets, using observations from space-based and large ground-based telescopes. And I think that both are very useful for making these observations. But one key difference between space-based telescopes and ground-based telescopes is that with the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, these are telescopes that we’ve launched into outer space. And so when we’re making our observations, we don’t have to look through the atmosphere of the Earth in order to peer into what these worlds are like.
I finished my Ph.D. about a year and a half ago, and I was primarily working with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and that was some of the best data that we could get to measure exoplanet atmospheres. But on Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST was launched into space, and it’s now about a million miles away from the earth, and it is vastly improving and revolutionizing what is possible to observe. The reason is that the James Webb Space Telescope is huge. It’s about the size of a tennis court, and it is extremely stable, so the data that we take is not affected by the movements or the shaking of the telescope itself. It’s also very precise, so any measurements that we make have really small uncertainties, really small error bars. So we have a better sense of what we’re measuring, and we are collecting more light because the telescope is so much bigger. So that enables us to get a better resolution or a better kind of crispness to the data that we are taking. And on top of that, it can observe at a very wide wavelength range, about 10 times bigger than what Hubble could observe.
ARDALAN: What was it like cohosting a science podcast for kids? You were part of the first season of Nat Geo’s podcast called How We Explore. The show is all about being a scientist in the field and shows what it’s like starting a career in science. Let’s listen to a clip.
(Clip from How We Explore podcast)
ALAM: I didn’t have any interest in astronomy growing up. I grew up in New York City, where there’s a lot of light pollution, so I didn’t have a backyard telescope or anything like that. But I was always a very curious kid. I constantly asked my parents “Why?” and “How?” I think it was actually pretty annoying to them. But I also think it’s this curiosity that led me to become a scientist, because asking why and how is a major part of my job doing research.
ALAM (to Ardalan): So I had a great experience hosting the How We Explore podcast. I actually am a very visual person, so I don’t listen to a ton of podcasts. I don’t have any series that I listen to regularly. And so my kind of fun fact post-How We Explore is that I’ve been on more podcasts than I’ve listened to, which is kind of funny to think about. But it was just so wonderful. I love the book No Boundaries, and I love the idea of expanding the work that Gabby Salazar and Claire Fieseler did in collecting those interviews and packaging it in another way that could be helpful and useful for kids.
ARDALAN: And thanks to our colleague Emily Everhart for all her work on that series. It was based on a book, and you were brought in as one of the cohosts. What kind of reactions did you get from kids and parents about the series?
ALAM: The podcast was very successful, and I think parents really appreciate that the podcast really focused on featuring all women, both the women that we talked about as well as cohosted by two women, myself and Gabby Salazar, coauthor of the No Boundaries book. And one of the exciting things is that each episode explores all of the ways that young kids and especially young girls can contribute to moving science forward.
ARDALAN: What are kids curious about when it comes to National Geographic? What do you think?
ALAM: I think that a lot of the National Geographic Explorers have these quote-unquote dream jobs that seem not practical or not, like, a reality. And I think that a lot of the people that I meet through National Geographic have jobs that I’ve heard my peers when I was four or five or six say, but these are adults that have these jobs. And I think that it shows that these jobs can be realities and they are rooted in curiosity and exploration about the natural world.
ARDALAN: And how did you become a National Geographic Explorer?
ALAM: So I was a college student when I applied for the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant. It was back in 2015, and the grant covers research, conservation, and exploration, and I needed support for a research trip. This is when I was working on an undergraduate astronomy research project, and I had the good fortune to travel to an observatory to obtain data for my research. But I didn’t have the funding to travel to that observatory. It was Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. So we applied for a Young Explorer’s grant and thankfully were awarded it, so we were able to go to Chile and that was my first experience there.
ARDALAN: You’re very much at the early part of your career. There’s so much more probably that energizes you about what you can discover yourself. What is it that if we were to talk 10 years from today, you hope that you’ve accomplished?
ALAM: Ten years from now, I hope that I really spearheaded our understanding of giant planets out there in the Milky Way. So planets that are similar to Jupiter in size and composition in terms of being gas giant planets that are a bit closer in. I think that with the James Webb Space Telescope, we can really get an in-depth understanding of these targets since they’re the biggest and brightest planets and the easiest to observe because of that. And I hope that I will have also contributed to our understanding of smaller planets, both the Earth-size, kind of rocky planets, as well as these planets that are intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune called sub-Neptunes or super-Earths, that, it turns out, are actually the most common type of planet in the galaxy. But we have nothing like that in our solar system. So I’m involved in some programs that are taking data now with the James Webb Space Telescope. We’re starting to take the most detailed look at their atmospheres to date, and I hope that these studies are going to lay the foundations for understanding the most common type of planet out there.
ARDALAN: Are you listening too?
ALAM: So I am not. But I know there’s some folks in SETI and stuff that are working on things like that.
ARDALAN: Would love to end our interview with this last audio clip you shared with us from your day of fasting. This is close to the end of the evening when you’ve already broken your fast. You’ve had your meal.
(Alam audio diary)
ALAM: All righty. We are done with fast number one. It is almost 10 p.m. and we just got back from the mosque where we broke our fast and said our prayers. I think overall this first day has been good. I was feeling energized, definitely a little bit sleepy in the afternoon but nothing a nap couldn’t fix. I think one of the special things about Ramadan is that I always use this time to be really mindful of the way that I spend my time and reflect on what I’m grateful for and so that’s something that I did today and definitely am looking forward to doing every other day this month. I think we’re off to a great start, but for now I am tired and ready to go to bed so that I can wake up tomorrow morning and do it all over again.
ARDALAN: How do you like ending your nights during Ramadan?
ALAM: I love to have a sweet and a glass of milk or a cup of tea and just relax in my pajamas. A day of fasting is exhausting. I’ve lost a bit of sleep. And so that moment of relaxing with two of my favorite things, a warm beverage and a sweet treat, is my favorite way to end the night.
ARDALAN: We’ve been speaking with Munazza Alam, a National Geographic Explorer and postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us. And once again, Ramadan Mubarak.
ALAM: It was great being on Overheard.
ARDALAN: Read more about Munazza’s work on her website, munazzaalam.github.io. That’s M-U-N-A-Z-Z-A A-L-A-M dot G-I-T-H-U-B dot I-O.
Also check out our digital stories “Why Ramadan is the most sacred month in Islamic culture,” and “Five changes to the lifestyle of Muslims during Ramadan,” on natgeo.com.
CREDITS
This week’s Overheard episode is produced by Hansdale Hsu who also sound-designed this episode and composed our theme song.
Our senior producers are Brian Gutierrez and Jacob Pinter.
Our senior editor is Eli Chen.
Our manager of audio is Carla Wills.
Our photo editor is Julie Hau.
This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners.
The Walt Disney Company is a majority owner of National Geographic Media.
Michael Tribble is the vice president of integrated storytelling.
Nathan Lump is National Geographic’s editor in chief.
And I’m Davar Ardalan, executive producer of audio at National Geographic. Thanks for listening.
SHOW NOTES
Want more?
Follow Munazza on her website, http://munazzaalam.github.io/.
Find out why Ramadan is the most sacred month in Islamic culture, discover five unique traditions Muslims bring to Ramadan celebrations, and learn why these five sites are among the holiest in all of Islam, all on natgeo.com.
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Learn about some of the ways Muslims around the world celebrate the end of Ramadan in this Nat Geo article.
Visit the world’s most exquisite mosques and discover the incredible historic, cultural, and religious insight they provide.
And see how American Muslims celebrate Islam’s holiest holiday in Eid al-Fitr celebrations across the United States.
