Fall 2011
Jeff Adkins has written a book. Here
is an article about it.
January-April 2009
Jeff Adkins and student Ame Bartlebaugh continue to work on data collected
during the Spitzer Teacher Program project on NGC 4051 sponsored by Varoujan
Gorjian.
Ame has participated in the project by processing images, collecting data
from the images, and reporting the results. Since the project decided to
redo the data collection to have a more uniform aperture setting and try to
make the results more consistent, Ame has been dilligently working on
redoing the photometry in the B band. We anticipate finishing that work by
the 15th.
Ame also entered the Contra Costa County Science and Engineering Fair with
her project that attempted to look at the size of the dust shell surrounding
NGC 4051 using only the ground-based data. The project was completed and
she won a 3rd place in her category. She created a poster for the project
and also completed a research paper to accompany it.
Ame and Jeff went to the Long Beach AAS to help present the research and
education posters for this project. "The whole project was a really good
opportunity, and I'm going to encourage more kids to do something like this.
It was good to see how scientists really do stuff and to work like them,"
according to Ame. Ame is a junior and is deciding on what kind of project
she will be doing next year.
Jeff has presented overviews of Ame's research at the NSTA workshops in New
Orleans, and at the AGU conference in San Francisco. He also plans to make
presentations this next year that discuss student research, including Ame's,
at the 2010 NSTA conference.
Jeff also has started working with the WISE group headed by Bryan Mendez and
is working with the Spitzer Teachers who have signed on to be Educator
Ambassadors for the WISE mission. This is mostly the group that is working
on NGC 4051. The project will generate a workbook.
We continue to experiment with the software used in the project for general
classroom use (APT). This summer may provide an opportunity to roll it out
in the entire classroom instead of just the research project students.
May-June 2008
Alekzandir Morton and Thomas Travagli presented their research on
determining the redshift of S5 0716+714 at the California State
Science Fair and were awarded first place in the Senior Division of
Physics and Astronomy. They were mentored by SSC scientist Mark Lacy.
The students were awarded a $1000 scholarship each. In addition, they
successfully concluded in their project that it was possible to
determine a redshift for the target and are considering sumitting
their research to a refereed science journal. They have now graduated
high school and are both pursuing careers in astronomy.
They presented their research at the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society,
the Stockton Astronomical Society, the Antioch Unified School District
School Board and other venues. Articles about them were published by
the Contra Costa Times (Link: http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_9407760)
and in the Antioch Press (link:
http://www.antiochpress.com/article.cfm?articleID=19692)
John Michael Santiago, who assisted with the data reduction on the WZ
Sge project, recieved a 4th place award at the Contra Costa Science
and Engineering Fair. He also presented his research to the Mt.
Diablo Astronomical Society, the Stockton Astronomical Society, and
the Antioch Unified School District School Board. "JM" is graduating
this year along with Alekzandir and Thomas, and his assistance in the
WZ Sge project and the school's planetarium will be missed.
Student Ame Bartlebaugh has begun work on the NGC 4051 project with
Varoujan Gorjian's group. Jeff Adkins, Babs Sepulveda, and Chris
Martin met during RBSE training in June in Tucson and discussed
possible warm-up activities for students preparing to visit the SSC.
In addition we attempted to collect images from the GLAST GTN network
but the status of those images is unknown at this time. Kevin McLin at
Sonoma State is assisting us with this project from the data reduction
and analysis end.
Presentations about the projects listed above were made by Jeff Adkins
at the California Partnership Academy Conference, the Mt. Diablo
Astronomical Society, the Stockton Astronomical Society, and several
other venues. The Student Project was based on a target originally
selected from the GTN quasar list hosted by Sonoma State. The data
reduction techniques were based on methods originally used in the
Hands-On-Universe program but adapted by students at DVHS for images
collected through the New Mexico Skies program. New Mexico Skies was
used on the Student Research Project in previous years. Also,
information about the project was presented at the summer RBSE
training in Tucson.
January-April 2008
Students working on the original Spitzer AGN project have completed
their work on the followup project to measure the redshift of S50716
+714. Using the Spitzer's IRS instrument, students Alekzandir Morton
and Thomas Travagli obtained the spectra of the quasar they observed
last year with MIPS and IRAC. The students wrote the proposal to use
IRS and thus became the first high school students to have a Spitzer
proposal they wrote themselves accepted for observing. With the help
of Spitzer scientist Dr. Mark Lacy, the students were able to
determine the redshift of their target, which allowed them to refine
a model they developed for the radiation coming from the target.
Using this model, Alekzandir Morton entered the Junior Humanities and
Science Symposium and won 3rd place in the Northern California/
Western Nevada region, which entitled him to go to Orlando, Florida
in May to be a non-competing delegate at the National Symposium.
In addition, the student team entered their local science fair (the
Contra Costa Science and Engineering Fair) and won first place in the
12th grade physical science category. They won $1000 scholarships
(each) at the local fair as well as several special awards. They are
taking their project on to the California State Science Fair in May.
Last year, they won 4th place in the state with the earlier version
of the project.
Along with the other students who do research at Deer Valley High,
these students will present their results at a variety of local
venues including the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society, the Stockton
Astronomical Society, and the SSP Demo Day at Deer Valley High School.
In other Spitzer news from our school, students JM Santiago presented
his work on the WZ Sge project at the local science fair and got a
4th place rating. Trevor Bennett, also a senior at Deer Valley,
attended the January meeting of AAS and participated in poster
sessions for the science results and helped develop an educational
activity to show how eclipsing binary stars change in brightness over
time.
July-September 2007
Things have been very busy with students involved in the Spitzer AGN
Group.
First, Thomas Travagli and Alekzandir Morton, who used the Spitzer in
the second round of the Spitzer AGN project, completed their research
paper and submitted it to the RBSE journal at the NOAO office at the
University of Arizona. It was accepted, and after some revisions, it
was published in the 2007 journal.
Second, as noted in an earlier report, the boys wrote a proposal with
the help of Mark Lacy of the SSC to revisit their target of last
year, S5 0716 +714, in an attempt to get a more accurate
determination of its redshift, which is not well known now.
Following a suggestion and discussion with scientists at the AAS
meeting in Seattle last year, the boys decided to write their own
proposal instead of relying upon teachers or researcher to pick a
good project.
In early October, they learned that Dr. Soifer of the SSC approved
their project, and an additional observation of the target using the
IRS instrument has now been put in the schedulng pipeline. As a
result of this news, which we believe may be the only time high
school students actually wrote the proposal alone to get the time,
Thomas and Alekzandir seem to be the only high school students to
ever submit and have accepted a proposal for the space telescope.
Local papers picked up on the story and added to the attention these
young men have been garnering.
In other news, a student from last year's SSC visit, John Michael
Santiago, has started work on Dr. Steve Howell's WZ Sge project
investigating the properties of a special magnetic cataclysmic
variable star. John Michael and Jeff Adkins will visit the SSC in
mid October to discuss plans, reduce data, and learn about this
interesting object and how Spitzer was used to observe it.
April-June 2007
The Spitzer-AGN team at Deer Valley High School completed work and
entered the local science fair with a report on the results of
observing S5 0716+714 using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-
based telescopes. Manutej Mulaveesala, Thomas Travagli, and
Alekzandir Morton won 1st place in 11th grade physical science at
the fair, and were invited to compete at the California State Science
Fair. They won a 4th place at the California State Science Fair as
well. The young men also received a medallion from the Yale Science
and Engineering Association for Most Outstanding 11th Grade Exhibit
in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics or Chemistry.
After the science fairs the students have been presenting the results
of the research at various meetings. Presentations about the ongoing
research were made at the June Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society
Meeting to 40 people, and to 30 people at the East Bay Astronomical
Society in May. Nearly 50 people heard a short version of the
presentation at the Antioch Unified School District's monthly board
meeting. They also did a presentation at the annual end-of-the-year
roundup for the school's ESPACE academy in May.
They have also been invited to speak at the Fremont Astronomical
Society this fall, and may be attending the Amateur Astronomers of
Northern California's annual convention.
Two of the students are juniors-- Morton and Travagli-- and they plan
to enter the fair next year as well. To this end they are working on
attempting to get one more measurement of the same target using
Spitzer in the last cycle of its operation using the infrared
spectrometer.
On another front, during the National Science Teacher's Association
in Nashville this year in March, Jeff Adkins did a session for about
30 people on using space probes in the classroom and discussed the
Spitzer project in some detail. At this meeting Jeff and other
teachers met with Steve Howell's Wz Sge project (which has
subsequently been approved) and agreed to participate in this
project. Work on this project will begin this summer and fall with a
new group of students. Steve Howell sent some training materials and
background material that will be shared with a new student research
team this fall.
January-March 2007
Students Alekzandir Morton, Thomas Travagli and Manutej Mulaveesala
attended the January 2006 AAS meeting in Seattle. The students
presented the results of their analysis of data from the observations
of S5 0716+714 at a poster session. They received many useful
comments and met a number of professional astronomers.
Following the conference the students prepared to enter the Contra
Costa County Science and Engineering Fair in March. They won a first
place rating in the 11th grade physical science category and have
been invited to the California State Science Fair in May, and they
plan to attend.
In the meantime they presented their research to four different
classes at Deer Valley High School, were interviewed by the local
paper in October, and got mentioned in the local press after the
science fair. Here is a link to the article in the Antioch Press:
http://www.antiochpress.com/article.cfm?articleID=2227
and a relevant quote from the article:
"The lone team entry from the school won the 11th-grade first-place
prize. Juniors Alekzandir Morton, Thomas Travagli and senior Manutej
Mulaveesala won with their project A Galaxy Ablaze from Afar, which
detailed their use of data collected from both ground-based
telescopes and the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope to determine what
kind of radiation is emitted from a distant blazar, a galaxy being
torn apart by a titanic black hole at its center.
The young men also received a medallion from the Yale Science and
Engineering Association for the most outstanding 11th-grade exhibit
in computer science, engineering, physics or chemistry."
Jeff Adkins did a presentation on the student's research for the
California Partnership Academy conference, and another one during
the National Science Teacher's association. The student research was
used as an example of how to gain access to space probes for
classroom use.
The student team members are mostly juniors. They have been working
on a followup proposal to use the Spitzer again to take a spectra of
it in order to better model the infrared emission.
September-December 2006
Two of Mr. Adkins' students, Thomas Travagli and Alekzandir Morton, are planning to enter the Jr. Science and Humanities Symposium with papers. Morton's paper will deal with data reduction and the interpretation of the light curves. Travagli did most of the work on the modeling of the infrared emission with a blackbody curve generator, and will discuss what he learned about that. Travagli, Morton and another student, Manutej Mulaveesala, will be entering the Contra Costa County Science and Engineering Fair later this spring, and expect to submit entries to the RBSE journal as well.
These three students and John Michael Santiago, who participated in the Pasadena data reduction trip, were interviewed by our local paper (the Antioch Press). The article is archived at http://www.antiochpress.com/article.cfm?articleID=1085#. The city of Antioch has a population of over 100,000 and this newpaper is delivered free to most homes. They also were written up in their school newspaper, which has a circulation of 3600.
Jeff Adkins will be doing workshops about the Spitzer research project at the California Partnership Academy conference in San Diego later this spring; at the National Science Teacher's Association meeting in March, and at the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society in May.
He also traditionally gives the school board of his district a briefing in May or June.
Still in progress is a write up for the procedures used to analyze the data, including the ground-based data they collected along with the Spitzer data. He also has a student assigned to building a large-scale Spitzer model from the cutout provided at the Cool Cosmos site. In the indefinite future is a long range goal of seeking funding to build infrared-astronomy exhibits at their planetarium similar to those they saw last year at the Flandreau planetarium in Tucson, including finding funding for an infrared camera.
March 2006
Mr. Adkins' student Brielle Hinckley, for her project "Microvariability of 4C 29.45 with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Ground Based Telescopes," won 3rd place in the 12th grade division at the Contra Costa Science and Engineering Fair, as well as a 2nd place $75 prize from the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society, and a $750 scholarship from Chevron.
Mr. Adkins has developed an interactive blackbody curve generator which allows the user to adjust the temperature of the blackbody with an adjustable slider control and see the effects of the change in real time.
The purpose of the simulator is to explain the nature of the blackbody radiation and to explain how SEDs are formed by combining several blackbody curves generated by different domains within the black hole's accretion disk.
Since Brielle Hinckley is graduating this year, a new team of student scientists has been assembled to manage the ground-based observations and do the reductions of the Spitzer data as was done before. The new team consists of Thomas Travagli, Alekzandir Morton, John Michael Santiago, and Manutej Malaveesala. All of these students are currently sophomores or juniors at DVHS and expect to join the research class next year to complete the work that is being planned today. Three training meetings with these students have already been held as of this writing. As of this week these students have written a proposal to use the New Mexico Skies remote control telescope for this project, and they were just approved for 8 hours of observing time.
February 2006
Mr. Adkins presented status reports and results at the Northern California section of the California
Partership Academy Conference in San Francisco in February.
Brielle Hinckley, Jeff's student, entered the Junior Humanities and Science Symposium at the Lawrence Hall of
Science in February, but did not move on to the next level. She is currently preparing for the Contra Costa County
Science and Engineering Fair to be held in Concord, California at the end of this month, where she will present her
analyses of the final data. After the fair, we will be posting her original ground-based images online along with
some material we hope to develop into a handout or stand-alone project for other students to use.
January 2006
The Spitzer AGN group has presented results at the 2006 Winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Two posters were presented, one dealing with the educational outreach efforts and one dealing with the scientific results.
During the AAS meeting in January, a draft proposal was written for extending the project begun last year by observing a different target. GTN 3 from the original proposal was selected as the most easily visible target, and a proposal was prepared and submitted to Dr. Soifer at the SSC. The proposal was accepted but the telescope time has not been scheduled.
July 2005
Mr. Adkins and his group are preparing to have some students meet before school starts in
September to prepare for a proposal for the Teacher Observing Program
in the fall related to our Spitzer project. All of the data is
collected and awaiting everyone to come back from vacation to
continue the analysis. A few of his research students next year
have summer assignments related to the background for this project.
Students in Mr. Adkins' class are meeting with him over the summer for background training (they are doing the TLRBSE AGN and Stellar Spectroscopy packets as summer homework) and in August we will work on refining the ground-based light curves and those portions of the SEDS coming from our V,R, and I filtered images. Some preliminary light curves have been completed, but without error bars so they are not ready for distribution.
Workshops
Mr. Adkins did a workshop on the Spitzer research for the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society on June 28. A brief overview of the proposal process was made plus an update on the data itself.
Ms. Stefaniak is scheduled for a summer course on the Invisible Universe starting July 19. She is also planning several workshops in October for her state science convention including on October 6:
Teaching Multiwave Astronomy 8:30-9:30
DASLed by the Sun 10-11
Infrared Astronomy 2-3:30
Web Site
The web site has been updated with instructions on how to download Spitzer data using Leopard. A blog of interesting links related to AGN has been started. The Spitzer Science Center's page for our project has been posted at the SSC, and our site and their site contain mutual links to lead to each other.
Related Grants
Mr. Adkins got a $10,000 grant from the California Department of Education to highlight student research, including Spitzer-and GLAST-related research, for visitors seeking to set up space academies at other schools. Visitors from Lake County, California, (already in possession of an observatory and planetarium) visited our site and were given a strong referral to TLRBSE and Spitzer projects and urged to apply.
This is the last year for Mr. Adkins' 4-year Specialized Secondary Program Grant, which supports student research projects and outreach projects. His school now has a completely functional and operational planetarium, and we have received donated camera equipment for our LX200 GPS telescope. We are going to purchase UVBRI filters and related equipment for continuing our research beyond this year.
Ms. Stefaniak and Mr. Adkins have 8 submissions combined for this year's RBSE journal and we anticipate more next year.
June 2005
Observations Completed
Ground based observations were completed by a number of observers, although poor weather plagued many of the volunteers this month. Contributors to the GLAST call for observations made by Gordon Spear added data to the AAVSO database, and we have assigned a student to begin looking at this data. Our own observations managed through the New Mexico Skies program were again greatly assisted by Lynn Rice's patient and ongoing cooperation in providing proper filters and time on a special telescope not normally accessible to TLRBSE teachers. We have a rather large data set of dozens of images taken before and after each Spitzer observation. Students will be working on reducing this data this fall in Adkins' research class.
May 2005:
Ground Based observations:
Several observers participated in our widely disseminated call for observations. Images have been received from John Sanford, Mike Harms and Vivian Hoette. Additional images were taken in a variety of filters by Mr. Adkins' students Brielle Hinckley and Crystal Ewen through the New Mexico Skies system sponsored by TLRBSE. Lynn Rice at New Mexico Skies graciously and generously arranged for VRI filters to be available without the usual charge for exchanging filter sets by providing access to a second telescope instead of changing filter sets on the usual remote control telescope. Many other participating observers were clouded out in the days before and after the Spitzer observation. Gordon Spear reports that several observations were made by observers contributing to the AAVSO, and more are planned for the second observation.
Students have already begun reducing data for end of the school year projects. Student Darren Tyler is analyzing Mike Harms' images; Crystal Ewen and Jennifer Shankey have begun reducing data from the HOU archive provided by Vivian Hoette; and Brielle Hinckley is reducing data from her own images. Some of the NM Skies data, the AAVSO data, and the data from John Sanford may not get analyzed until Fall when new astronomy and research students are assigned the task. As of this writing there is less than 5 days of instruction left, so only projects already in progress will be completed for the school year. Some students are planning to work on data reduction through the summer. As of this writing it is too early to report a light curve or a partial SED for the target based on student reduction of contributed data. We may have something preliminary to show by next month's report.
This fall there will be a larger group of students working on data reduction.
Workshops
On May 11 Mr. Adkins did a workshop on "Space Probes in the Classroom" at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair which included
a description of the Spitzer project and its progress. Over 40 people attended the workshop and it was well received.
Mr. Adkins did a workshop on the Spitzer research for the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society on June 28. A brief
overview of the proposal process was made plus an update on the data itself.
Display at DVHS Planetarium
A semi-permanent exhibit showing how infrared radiation from a remote control can be detected on a webcam but not by the human eye has been co
mpleted as a student project. This was one of our original objectives in the project proposal.
April 2005:
A new observing FAQ was written and continues to be edited with the assistance of Dr. Mark Lacy and others. It is posted at:
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/observingfaq.html
These instructions will help ground based observers contribute to the project.
Mr. Adkins presented a workshop at Deer Valley High School using the infrared teaching kit to a small group of teachers and students.
The workshop was well received, and resulted in several teachers borrowing the photocell-amplifier circuit for demonstration in their
own classrooms.
He also has presented a very brief synopsis of the project to the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society and invited them to participate.
Mr. Adkins' student Brielle Hinckley has taken an active role in pursuing the ground-based observation of our target.
She has already taken approximately 10 images of 4C 29.45 over two different observing sessions, all using luminance (clear) filters.
Several other students have assisted in collecting images using the New Mexico Skies system, sponsored by TLRBSE's school year
observing program. Preliminary results from the data reduction will be available by the end of next month.
Because the finder charts and references have UVBRI filter data, the team requested images from this set from the volunteer observers.
The team inquired with Steven Croft about obtaining enough time to do 4 observations with NM Skies using these filters, which come
via a 4 hour overhead charge from NM Skies to change and align the filter wheel assembly from its usual RGB configuration.
Consulting with the Spitzer Science Center's Dr. Mark Lacy, Hinckley has been charged with making a decision about whether or
not to use luminance + R from the RGB set, or to write a proposal to the telescope allocation committee to get time to make
UVBRI observations.
March 2005:
The project web page is up and running. The address is:
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer
Mr. Adkins has presented a talk at the Stockton Astronomical Society about the Teacher Observing Program and specifically this proposal.
Mr. Adkins' student Brielle Hinckley, a junior at Deer Valley High School, has started making telescopic measurements of the
target object using the New Mexico Skies remote telescope facility. Brielle spent 3 hours observing the target using a
variety of filters. A sample of one of these observations is posted on the web site and shows that 14" class telescopes
can effectively measure this target. Other Deer Valley students are participating in the data reduction as an exercise.
Mr. Adkins also gave a workshop with a focus on infrared for teachers within his district.
Jeff Adkins
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John Blackwell
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Jacqueline Barge
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Christopher Border
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Kareen Borders
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Robert Bonadurer
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Merrill Butler
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Lauren Chapple
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Joseph Childers
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Howard Chun
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Wendy Curtis
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Richard DeCoster
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Stacy DeVeau
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Harlan Devore
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Cris DeWolf
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Velvet Dowdy
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Thomas Doyle
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Dean Drumheller
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Debbie Edwards
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Mike Ford
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Debbie French
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John Gibbs
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Peter Guastella
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Rosa Hemphill
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Ardis Herrold
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Vivian Hoette
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Chelen Johnson
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Virginia Jones
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Adam Keeton
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Susan Kelly
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Marcella Linahan
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Thomas Loughran
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Carolyn Mallory
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Anthony Maranto
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Christoper Martin
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Kevin McCarron
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Matthew McCutcheon
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David McDonald
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Shefali Mehta
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Cindy Melton
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Kate Meredith
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Lauren Novatne
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Kathryn O'Connor
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Caroline Odden
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Jeffrey Paradis
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Vincent Pereira
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Helen Petach
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Peggy Piper
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Peter Pitman
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Elizabeth Ramseyer
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Steve Rapp
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Theresa Roelofsen Moody
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Denise Rothrock
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Diane Sartore
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John Schaefers
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Sally Seebode
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Babs Sepulveda
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Timothy Spuck
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Darryl Stanford
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Linda Stefaniak
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Dwight Taylor
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Jennifer Tetler
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Beth Thomas
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Cynthia Weehler
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Lynne Zielinski
