Chelen Johnson
Luminous Data Miners: Using ultraviolet images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite and infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope to find a correlation between the color and luminosity of gas emission and dust emission around supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.
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.
I found it most interesting to see the scientific process in action. Scientists were questioning scientists, sometimes fairly aggressively.
The most valuable learning in high school arises when students take ownership of the content. Project such as the analysis of NASA telescope data, provide some optimal examples of this type of learning experience.
