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.
Everything [at the 2013 AAS] was new. The interesting piece was attending a press briefing and then comparing that to the scientist version.
My observation was that [our students'] ideas for their future expanded with the whole experience. That science became more than a class but an endeavor in which they could participate.
In its current form, anyone with moderate computer skills and high school physics can download, explore, and begin to understand available data.
