Chelen Johnson
Investigtating Moving-group Photometry and Understanding Lightcurve Structures (IMPULS) will be studying rotation rates of stars in the young nearby Beta Pic Moving Group.
High school students are hungry for authentic research experiences, and both high school teachers and students benefit immensely from having contact with a professional astronomer. This may seem inefficient (because it costs a lot of money to connect individuals with professionals), but it can change lives, and there are wonderful ripple effects.
The science part of our project was overwhelming to me at first. [...]Since then I have learned an incredible amount from my mentor teacher, mentor scientists and my group members.
To me what stood out [at my first AAS] was the wide variety of work – from characterization of the structure of the Milky Way (more of a challenge than I ever knew!) to the search for and characterization of exoplanets to the understanding of how quasar evolution relates to the origins of the Universe.
