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.
Having the opportunity to get new ideas from my peers and discuss projects, activities and strategies helps me to grow and keeps me from becoming stagnant in my teaching. Programs like this are like gold to me because the financial situation in the district in which I teach is such that there is no money available to send our faculty to national conferences.
Also revealed [at the 2012 AAS] was the fact that students rarely mention “creativity” and “imagination” when describing science. This tells me, as a planetarium educator, we must do a better job communicating on how discoveries are made in science.
I am gaining in confidence as to my ability to understand, contribute to the study, and the data we will be using.
