Chelen Johnson
They Might Be Giants are using data from the Kepler mission to classify the brightness changes of giant stars in an effort to understand how the observed brightness variations of giant stars may relate to the different stages of giant star evolution.
Of all the professional development programs in which I have been involved, NITARP continues to rank among the top few. The opportunity to work with a world-class astronomer and alongside teachers and students across the country on a real research project is amazing!
I think that the most surprising thing about it was how young everyone was! I absolutely did not expect that, maybe because the amateur community is so much older by comparison, and is mainly composed of retired people.
This experience convinced me even further that I can push myself to learn even more each and every day. I started out feeling very overwhelmed and unprepared last year. I forced myself to work through my unease and wound up much more comfortable. I learned that astronomers are much more down-to-earth than I envisioned a lot of them to be and so many of them are very willing to go out of their way to explain things when we have questions.
