February 2012
Richard DeCoster's student, Alex Antonow, will be presenting their
research poster at an undergraduate research symposium at Loyola
Marymount University.
Also, Dr. DeCoster has continued to intermittently monitor their
originally discovered variable (in the IR) target with the 24inch
telescope at Yerkes Observatory and with SkyNet. No significant
variation in the optical has yet been seen. He has also been
monitoring some of Henrietta Leavitt's cepheids in SMC for the
upcoming 100th Anniversary of her 1912 paper.
October 2011
Elizabeth Ramseyer, Peggy Piper, and Richard DeCoster included NITARP
in talks given at the Illinois Science Teachers Association meeting in
October 2011.
Spring 2011
The Niles West teams presented to the school board and audience (at
least 30 people) both of their Science Posters (Feb 28).
We will also present our education posters to the Chicago Section of
the AAPT April 9th. Again approx 30 people.
January 2011
Dr. DeCoster presented the results of his 2010 team's work at the
Seattle AAS in January 2011. Here is the team's science poster and education poster. Dr.
DeCoster was the first author on the science poster. Please see
the AAS 2011 page for a
summary of this team's activities.
August 2010
Dr. DeCoster visited IPAC in August 2010 with his students.
Please see the Summer 2010 visits page.
January 2010
Dr. DeCoster is a new NITARP teacher this year, and has just started with his team.
He is excited about getting kids involved in the program.
He enjoyed the AAS meeting, as overwhelmingly large as it was. He learned a lot
from many different talks and posters. He writes that "My students were really
impressed when I gave them just a summary of some of the stuff we did and saw!"
He writes:
For me the most interesting parts of the AAS meeting were the plenary talks.
These talks were long enough that those without the special knowledge had a
chance to understand what was being discussed.
The special session on gamma-ray pulsars [was specifically interesting to me
because the subject] had just been chosen by AAAS and Science as its
runner-up story of the year. I had gone back and looked at the August
issue of Science and tried to at least understand the article abstracts.
Being able to follow this up with talks by the people involved was really neat!
The last session that I was able to hear before dashing off to the airport
was "Science with the New HST." The contrasts in the talks by Garth
Illingworth and Marla Geha were mind-blowing. Illingworth was showing
us distant objects with z > 8 that eclipsed the record set last April
by GRB 090423, while Geha was looking at nearby dE Galaxies and showing
H-R diagrams for thousands and thousands of stars in another galaxy!
My NITARP colleague Kevin McCarron and I looked at their slides in amazement.
The Invited Sessions were even better in that the presenter had time
to give lots of background that was useful to those of us who were far
from being experts. Sessions that I particularly enjoyed were "Finding
Utility in the Diverse Origins of Gamma-Ray Bursts." One of my students
at Niles West had become interested in GRBs as we thought they were the
results of mergers of black holes. As I understood Prof. Bloom's talk,
this is not now the preferred source model at the process takes too long.
My student thought it was interesting that scientists could change their
minds about how things worked.
Finally much of the invited talk by Eugene Churazov on Galaxy Clusters
and Black Holes I found to be understandable because he used many equations
from ideal gas laws that are familiar to high school teachers and their
students. In talking with Dr. Churazov after his talk, he re-emphasized
how far one could go on this topic with these familiar and seemingly
simple equations. The picture below is of two of my NITARP colleagues
and me posing with Dr. Churazov after his talk.
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
