Published: March 15, 2007
High school seniors Vinay Patel and Matt Pellegrino prepared a paper for publication based upon their Spitzer research: "Star Formation Rate in Three High Redshift Galaxy Clusters: A Contribution to the Study of Galactic Evolution". The paper will be submitted to the RBSE Journal on April 3rd. Meanwhile, the students submitted a team project to the Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair. They earned a First in Division--Intel Excellence in Computer Science award, as well as other cash awards from the Michiana Astronomical Society and the Physics Club of Notre Dame. Finally, the story of their participation in the Spitzer project was written up on the front page of the Community section of the South Bend Tribune on March 20, 2007. The SBT has a circulation of 146,476. The article is accessible at https://www2.southbendtribune.com/stories/2007/03/20/community.20070320-sbt-FULL-E1-Sky_s_the_limit_for_.sto Meanwhile, enrollment for next year is full (25 students) in the science research course led by Spitzer Teacher Tom Loughran at Saint Joseph's High School, were Matt and Vinay are students, thanks in no small part to the publicity generated by their Spitzer research.
Matt's and Vinay's paper presents the calculated star formation rates for each member and for the wholes of the three galaxy clusters, compares the morphology distribution of cluster members to published trends for other high-redshift clusters, and characterizes each cluster with respect to morphology - distance, star formation - distance, and star formation - morphology relations. Finally, they compare the star formation rate for the entire clusters and for members inside the virial radius to published simulated results, finding surprising agreement with the theory in spite of surprisingly different observed trends in the SFR - redshift relation for the set of whole clusters, compared with their virial fractions.