Good News Sunday: Wheaton native discovers star, makes astrophysics history
This is Good News Sunday, a compilation of some of the more upbeat and inspiring stories published recently by the Daily Herald:
In his adolescent dreams as a student at Wheaton Warrenville South High School, Brian Welch fantasized about a pie-in-the-sky career as a star tight end with the Chicago Bears.
Instead, the 27-year-old astrophysicist discovered the oldest and most distant star known to man. And he got to name it.
"It was pretty much an accidental discovery," says Welch, lead author of the paper describing the discovery for the March 30 edition of Nature, which has made him a darling of the astrophysics world, earning him interviews with The New York Times, Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corp. and other news outlets far beyond the narrow niche he expected.
Working on his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University, Welch was given an assignment in 2019 from Dan Coe with the Space Telescope Science Institute, also in Baltimore. Welch says he needed "to figure out what was going on" with the Sunrise Arc galaxy by studying images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Galaxies that are far away generally look like clusters of light from millions of stars "blended together," Welch says. In the midst of the clusters of lights from millions of stars, one star was magnified.
"It wasn't a single 'eureka moment.' It was more of a slow burn," Welch says of his discovery. "It was a really long and slow process."
Ukrainian couple finds refuge in St. Charles, confident they will return home to Kyiv
In 1983, Nataliia Sukhodolska wrote a children's story about an old man who wanted to make the world unhappy.
As the Ukrainian native sat in her daughter's St. Charles home Sunday, she paged through the book of children's stories and pointed out the illustration of her story's villain. "Putin, Putin," she said as she pointed to the picture.
Though the story she penned years ago wasn't about Putin, she said he was not unlike the story's villain.
The 78-year-old and her husband, Iurii Siedov, left Kyiv days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Their journey, filled with twists and turns, entered its next chapter on April 3 as they settled in to their daughter's home.
The couple is grateful to be able to stay with their daughter Yaroslava Dunn and her husband, Thomas, but they also hold a confident optimism they will one day go home.
"Ukraine will win," they said through their daughter.
Buffalo Grove firefighters honored for rescuing driver from frozen pond
In the early morning hours of Feb. 2, Buffalo Grove firefighters rushed to 901 E. Deerfield Parkway, where they found a person trapped inside a vehicle partially submerged in a frozen pond.
Firefighter/paramedic Brian Potesta donned an ice rescue suit and went in to help the victim, assisted by Lincolnshire firefighters.
With Buffalo Grove fire Lt. Steve Rusin overseeing the operation, firefighters found the victim disoriented and suffering from hypothermia, Buffalo Grove Fire Chief Mike Baker said.
Potesta and firefighter/paramedic Scott Renshaw removed the victim from the vehicle and placed him in a rescue basket before he was pulled to shore and taken to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville for treatment.
The heroic actions of the firefighters were recently honored by the Buffalo Grove village board.
"Without their interventions, expertise and timeliness, the outcome of the incident could have been tragic," Baker said.
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