Published: July 31, 2005
Mr. Adkins and his group are preparing to have some students meet before school starts in September to prepare for a proposal for the Teacher Observing Program in the fall related to our Spitzer project. All of the data is collected and awaiting everyone to come back from vacation to continue the analysis. A few of his research students next year have summer assignments related to the background for this project.
Students in Mr. Adkins' class are meeting with him over the summer for background training (they are doing the TLRBSE AGN and Stellar Spectroscopy packets as summer homework) and in August we will work on refining the ground-based light curves and those portions of the SEDS coming from our V,R, and I filtered images. Some preliminary light curves have been completed, but without error bars so they are not ready for distribution.
Workshops
Mr. Adkins did a workshop on the Spitzer research for the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society on June 28. A brief overview of the proposal process was made plus an update on the data itself.
Ms. Stefaniak is scheduled for a summer course on the Invisible Universe starting July 19. She is also planning several workshops in October for her state science convention including on October 6:
Teaching Multiwave Astronomy 8:30-9:30
DASLed by the Sun 10-11
Infrared Astronomy 2-3:30
Web Site
The web site has been updated with instructions on how to download Spitzer data using Leopard. A blog of interesting links related to AGN has been started. The Spitzer Science Center's page for our project has been posted at the SSC, and our site and their site contain mutual links to lead to each other.
Related Grants
Mr. Adkins got a $10,000 grant from the California Department of Education to highlight student research, including Spitzer-and GLAST-related research, for visitors seeking to set up space academies at other schools. Visitors from Lake County, California, (already in possession of an observatory and planetarium) visited our site and were given a strong referral to TLRBSE and Spitzer projects and urged to apply.
This is the last year for Mr. Adkins' 4-year Specialized Secondary Program Grant, which supports student research projects and outreach projects. His school now has a completely functional and operational planetarium, and we have received donated camera equipment for our LX200 GPS telescope. We are going to purchase UVBRI filters and related equipment for continuing our research beyond this year.
Ms. Stefaniak and Mr. Adkins have 8 submissions combined for this year's RBSE journal and we anticipate more next year.