Chelen Johnson
CM4Seyferts (Color-Magnitude for Seyferts): Using ultraviolet images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite and optical images and spectra from the ground based Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to find a correlation between the color and luminosity of the hot gas around supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.
There was a nice group of people around each poster [from NITARP 2011]. The students were all very well-prepared and gave a fabulous presentation! They all fielded questions very well. It was very, very impressive to see!
I was surprised and very encouraged to see a high proportion of people which are generally considered underrepresented in the sciences. That was a terrific take-home message for my students.
I didn’t know just how much data is publicly available. Anyone can do astronomy – you just need to come up with a question and figure out how to use the archives.