Chelen Johnson
The Luminosity, Accretion Disk, and Dust Team (LADDT) : combining UV, optical, and near infrared data for active galactic nuclei to look for a relation between the color of their accretion disks, the emission from their dust and their luminosity.
One of the things I love about astronomy is the very fact that we are not laboratory-bound scientists. Our lab is the universe, a constantly changing petri dish in the sky, so to say, and if you aren’t looking, you miss it!
I was also surprised [after the summer visit] not to be more tired. Don't get me wrong, I certainly took a five hour nap on Saturday after coming home on the red-eye from LA, but overall the week left me invigorated rather than exhausted.
We had a staff meeting this morning and the kids presented our research and shared our experiences to the entire staff. They did an outstanding job and many of our teachers have commented to me how impressed they were by what they did. One of our teachers (and MIT grad) asked a couple of good questions and commented afterward to me he was impressed that they could explain the answer (noting that they were not just number crunching).
