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February 8th, 2015 5:52 pm by Rick Wagner <\/p>\n
KINGSPORT A future Carl Sagan or two may come from the ranks of local high school graduates in years to come. <\/p>\n
But these future astronomers, would-be hosts of something like the late Sagans PBS television series Cosmos, are unlike astronomer and author Sagan was in at least one way. <\/p>\n
They are females. <\/p>\n
Sullivan South High School senior Kayla Jenkins and astronomy teacher Thomas Rutherford recently presented some of their NASA-commissioned research at a national astronomy conference in Seattle. <\/p>\n
The research anoutgrowth of a project started in 2013 is using the red shiftin light from a type of black hole called an active galactic nuclei. That is among the brightest of objects in the universe. <\/p>\n
Using a color magnitude measurement graphing color versus brightness from quasars and type 1 Seyfert galaxies, the research examined about 11,000 objects. <\/p>\n
Jenkins did another project on seeking to calculate the distance to an open star cluster. A third project, still underway with a friend, is to measure the distance from the earth to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy using globular clusters, <\/p>\n
The red shift research is for a NASA-funded program called NITARP, which stands for NASA\/Infrared Processing and Analysis Center Teacher Archive Research Project. <\/p>\n
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Sullivan South student working on path to astronomy career<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Home | Back February 8th, 2015 5:52 pm by Rick Wagner KINGSPORT A future Carl Sagan or two may come from the ranks of local high school graduates in years to come. Continue reading