Published: March 15, 2008
Mr. Loughran has been interviewed, and his students Clare and Curt soon will be, for an in-house publication for alumni; that article is not yet written. Articles will be written for local and diocesan newspapers as well.
After climbing into the details of the star formation rate project and presenting the material at the AAS, Mr. Loughran reviewed the chances of these two students making a contribution in the area they had intended: in estimation and reduction of error for the project. After several weeks of effort they decided not to pursue that option, and both students have moved on to assist in another science research project. (That project uses seismic data from the LIGO-Hanford experiment, and although the focus of our project is more earth science than astrophysics, it is useful to have students with the astronomy backgrounds Clare and Curt now have on the project, to help set it in context of the LIGO experiment.)
For now, they are suspending activity on the Spitzer SFR project until reduced IRAC data becomes available.