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Round 1 - Arp 102B Program News
Click on any teacher's name to see activities associated with NITARP.
Highlights of team activities
January 2006
The group presented their research results at the January 2006 AAS
meeting. poster (pdf), and
ADS abstract.
November 2005
On Nov 11, 2005, Harlan Devore gave a power point presentation called
"Seeing the Universe in Another Light" at the North Carolina Science
Teachers Association fall convention. About 30 teachers were present.
He had participants work through the first activity in the NASA
Multiwavelength Educational Outreach Activities. Mr. Devore then
outlined and demonstrated the other four activites. In addition, he
outlined the mission and capabilities of Spitzer, provided information
on how to access and view Spitzer images, and described the Spitzer
Teacher Program. Each participant was provided a CD-ROM with a copy of
his power point and the instructions needed for the five NASA
activities.
October 2005
Harlan Devore's school newspaper, The Hoofbeat, ran a front page
article on the ARP102B project in its October 2005 issue. The
newspaper reaches about 1500 students and 120 teachers. Howard
Chun ran two in-service workshops on the last two Wednesdays of
October for science teachers in his school district: one on classroom
infrared activities, and the other on multi-wavelength (including
infrared) astronomy research in the science classroom. The teachers
really enjoyed Michelle's IR video. The teachers went away with new
ideas for activities and science fair projects in their physical
science, biology, and chemistry classes. Mr. Chun had ten teachers
attending each workshop. Mr. Chun gave a one hour lecture on the
Spitzer Space telescope, the teacher researcher program, and our
group's research to a group of approximately 50 amateur astronomers at
the Seagrave Memorial Observatory in Scituate, RI. It was a different
experience talking to a knowledgeable and informed audience. He was
peppered with questions throughout the lecture. The Spitzer DVD was
very useful. He showed the IR video, the simulated launch, and the
pretty visible to IR pictures. They were also quite interested in how
he used IR in the classroom and with his students.
September 2005
Lauren Chapple has set up a secondary science staff meeting for
second semester. It will include a presentation on Spitzer and how it
is to be used in the classroom. He is also introducing his Spitzer
project and Harlan Devore's as an option for the spring research
project. Students must do a stellar spectroscopy project to qualify
for either Spitzer or AGN projects.
August 2005
Harlan Devore from the "The Supermassive Black Hole in Arp102B " team,
was featured in a Fayetteville Observer Article in the August 4, 2005
issue. The article was titled: "Teachers, students study final
frontier" The newspaper has a circulation of about 70,000. At
the Hands-On Universe Conference at Yerkes Observatory in mid-August,
Mr. Devore presented an overview of the Spitzer Telescope, its
instruments and capabilities, and how to use Leopard to retrieve
images. He used DS9 software to show samples of MIPS and IRAC images.
In addition, he described the Spitzer Teachers Program and gave an
overview the ARP102B project. The audience of about 30 people included
scientists, astronomy professors, and high school teachers. Most were
Teacher Resource Agents (TRAs) -- teacher trainers for HOU. Three of
the teachers present were also graduates of the TLRBSE or RBSE
programs. The presentation is in power point and is available for
other teachers who want to clone it. Lauren Chapple used Spot to
create a list of background flux (in MJY/sr) vs wavelength for our
target area. Mr. Devore coordinated with Dr. Chary and got the pixel
width of the spectral extraction area from each of our .fits images.
He set up a spreadsheet, using platescale to convert the pixel area of
each extraction into solid angles (in sr). He then multiplied it by
the integration time (in s) and used that to factor the background
flux. Unfortunately, the background flux numbers he is getting are
still too large - larger than the signal flux. In the next few days,
Mr. Devore plans to go over his work again to see if he can figure out
what he did wrong. If he can't, he will ask Dr. Chary to review his
calculations. Mr. Devore's student Katie has recently finished
identification of lines in a second set of spectra. They are finding
quite a few lines that just don't match any of the common spectral
lines found in AGNs. They suspect that the lines may be significantly
Doppler shifted. If so, the torus region does not seem to be
homogeneous because there is not a matching line that is shifted in
the other direction for most of these lines. Mr. Devore's student
Brian elected to take his Astronomy class rather than the Research in
Science class. As a result, he will be playing a much smaller role in
the analysis because he will not have much class time to work on it.
Lauren Chapple has put in for time at his next science department
meeting / inservice to present the Spitzer project.
June 2005
The data for the "Supermassive Blackhole in APR102B" project has been
archived and released. Teachers and four students visited the Spitzer
Science Center to work on data analysis with contact scientist Dr.
Ranga Chary. The visit was a great success for all.
May 2005
The data for the "Supermassive Blackhole in APR102B" project has been
archived and released. Data analysis is proceding and the teachers are
scheduled to visit the Spitzer Science Center on June 27th, 2005.
April 2005
Project status is as follows:
SST imaged our project on Mar 18th. The Spitzer Help Desk notified me that
preprocessing was completed and data released on April 20th. Dr Ram-Chary looked
at the spectral data and said that it looked good.
I am able to go to Pasadena at anytime during the months of Jun and July to do the
analysis, although I prefer an earlier date because I want to finish most of the analysis
and writing before school starts again. I have coordinated with Dr Ram-Chary, and he is
available to assist us with the analysis during the week of Jun
27th.
From Lauren:
I have applied for Spitzer / IR "in-service" time for next fall within
our school district.
March 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
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