Gianni DiCrosta / Roundup
Pierce College instructor Carolyn Mallory and two students will be working alongside the Spitzer Science Center to discover newborn stars in the far reaches of the galaxy.
The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program, or NITARP, began in 2004 as a project to involve both teachers and students in formal research with professional astronomers.
The project utilizes data collected from the Spitzer Space Telescope since 2003. This telescope is the largest infrared telescope to ever be launched into space.
Professor Mallory, along with three other teachers from other schools, will attend a three-day meeting this summer with their students at the California Institute of Technology campus, where the Spitzer Science Center is located. There they will analyze data side-by-side with a team of scientists and astronomers.
The data and pictures collected will be “stacked” to form a more complete image of the processes that are forming and growing these baby stars.
After the three days of hands-on research, Professor Mallory and her students will finish and summarize their results by themselves, and will present the results at a convention in Seattle in January 2011.
“It’s just so cool. I feel like I’m in grad school again,” says Mallory. “This really pushes our knowledge of the universe.”
Mallory views this project as a great opportunity to educate. “People are used to the concept of evolution in humans and animals, but not evolution in the universe.”
However, the upbeat astronomy instructor, who is also in charge of Pierce College’s Astronomy Society, stresses the fact that the program is not all work. “People like to have fun. I want to make sure people learn it and have fun.”
Dr. Luisa Rebull, a research scientist at Spitzer Science Center, will act as an overseeing scientist for the teachers and students.
On the benefits this provides the students, Rebull says that “science as it is taught in the classroom is very different than science as it is practiced day-to-day. Students that get involved in research are in a better position to know what science is really like, and in a better position to continue their education in the sciences.”
Mallory is also quite optimistic about the project and what it says about Pierce College. “We have students who will be some of the greatest scientists of tomorrow, and they will get that opportunity through Pierce.”
Mallory has yet to choose the students she will include in her part of the project, but has put up applications and information on her faculty website at www.faculty.piercecollege.edu/mallorcr.
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Visitors take a tour of the Zeiss Telescope at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Jan. 14. (Louie Heredia/Roundup)
