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Round 2 Programs - Overview
Round 2 was conducted when this program was still called the Spitzer
Space Telescope Research Program for Teachers and Students. We
advertised Round 2 of the Spitzer teacher's program to teachers on a
national level in early Autumn 2005 and by the end of October we
selected the teachers for the program. Of the 17 applications
received, we chose 6 teachers. The selection was made with special
attention to the teacher's education background and experience. The
6 teachers will all be working on a Spitzer observing program which
will involve the study star formation rates in three high redshift
galaxy clusters. At the January 2006 AAS meeting, the new teachers
met with with Round 1 teachers and learned about the six observed
Round 1 programs. They received training in Infrared Astronomy and
learned about the Spitzer Space Telescope, its instruments and the
observation planning process.
In addition to this new Spitzer program, three teams of teachers from
Round 1 were awarded additional observing time to expand on
successful work done on their Round 1 programs. The IC 2118 team
studied star formation in the Witch Head Nebula in the constellation
Orion. They observed the head of the nebula and approximately
quadrupled the number of young stars known there! In this round, they
continued their investigation by observing the densest part of the
rest of the cloud. Last year the GLAST team studied the AGN 4C 29.45
with the Spitzer MIPS and the IRAC instruments as well as
ground-based instruments. These observations were used to determine
the object's spectral energy distribution (SED), which was compared
to a model of disk emission in order to determine if there was a
component of the SED due to synchrotron radiation induced by the
jets. In Round 2 they observed another AGN and expanded their efforts
to create simultaneous observations through radio telescopes, optical
telescopes, and other instruments. The Brown Dwarf team searched for
low mass, cool, brown dwarfs in short orbital period interacting white
dwarf binaries. They detected excess emission in the 3-8 micron region
over that expected from a brown dwarf alone in four binary systems.
They also found, usung IRAC observations, that the star EF Eri was
unexpectedly bright in the mid-IR. In this round, the team observed
EF Eri with the IRS instument to learn more about this star.
The Round 2 teams were paired with scientists from the SSC
community with help and collaboration from NOAO scientists. The
scientists are the mentors and technical contacts for the individual
groups and respective observing project. For Round 2, four of our
teacher proposals were accepted and submitted for observations.
The participating teachers in Round 2 were: Jeff Adkins, John
Blackwell, Howard Chun, Velvet Dowdy, Rosa Hemphill, Ardis Herrold,
Thomas Loughran, Anthony Maranto, Steve Rapp, Theresa Roelofsen, Babs
Sepulveda, Linda Stefaniak, Timothy Spuck, Dwight Taylor, Beth Thomas,
and Cynthia Weehler. Support scientists included: Ranga-Ram Chary,
Vandana Desai, John Feldmeier, Rose Finn, Varoujan Gorjian, Don Hoard,
Steve Howell, Mark Lacy, Luisa Rebull and Gregory Rudnick.
Round 2 Programs - Team Pages
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