CM+Austin!

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Day 1: Tuesday** Today CC, DL, and I arrived in Austin for the American Astonomical Society's Winter Meeting. DL's poster was on display today, so we got to get a feel for how our presentation was going to work. I also got the opportunity to meet Greg Rudnick today and talk with him at dinner. He is a very knowlegeable and was eager to discuss our project. Listening to him talk about our SED models and how exactly you calculate SFR was very helpful. He was able to explain things on a level that I completely understood.
 * CM in Austin!


 * Day 2: Wednesday** Today CC, DL, and I went to a bunch of lectures. They were, for the most part, completely over my head, but it was interesting to hear what the speakers had to say. We did go to one lecture about astronomy in the classroom. There were six or seven different people who spoke about astronomy programs that they had started and science projects for classes like our own research class. It was interesting to hear that other people are engaging in similar projects and classes. One of the class descriptions included an electron motion dance class, which intrigued me! : ) That sounds like a fun way to learn! We also attended a more specialized lecture that was very in depth. The speaker was talking about exoplanets, I think... Its amazing how much he knew about the topic, though! He had to squeeze all of his information that he got from research into only seven minutes! I also got a chance to walk around the main exhibit hall at all of the different posters. They were mainly from graduate students and companies hiring graduate students. I talked to a few people about AGNs and learned a little something about that. I think that I could, perhaps, have an intelligent conversation with the AGN people about their project now.


 * Day 3: Thursday** Today our poster was on exhibit! We had it up from nine thirty to six thirty. It went pretty well, thought, I think. There were a good number of people interested in the project and the idea of a science research class in high school. I met the President of NOAO. I also got a chance to meet and talk with Zak Schroeder about his project. I asked him how exactly he calculated the star formation rates for the three galaxies. He explained that he figured out the calculations with Matt and Vinay last year when they were in Passadena at the Spitzer Space Center. Astronomers who work at the center helped them with the formulas, and then they all calculated the rates. They had to calculate them five times, though, because we are unsure of which SED model to use. These five numbers were then averaged to find the average SFR for each galaxies cluster. I also asked him about the error in their calculations. Schroder said that he did not think that there was a huge margin of error--the calculations were accurate, the error just had to be figured for when the five SED models got averaged. He believes that there is maybe a 7-9 percent region of error, which is very good!

We also went to a series of Google Sky lectures today. They updated this program since when we worked on it at the beginning of the year so that it now includes information and data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The pictures of the galaxies are mostly Spitzer images and they are working on the program so that people can upload and send in their own astroimages to be used on the site. I got a chance to use the new Google Sky--its really neat! There are also links to the Spitzer site on each of the images. We also went to another session about gamma rays. It was one of the more specialized lectures, but was nonetheless interesting. We attended a workshop on the Galaxy Zoo, as well. That was very interesting. I think that program could very useful. With it you can look at different galaxies and stars and see images of them. It has very clear resolution, so you can see the different pictures.

For the rest of the day, we were back at our poster in the exhibit hall. I did get another chance to walk around the room and learn about other people's projects. I talked with someone from IPAC. He taught me a little bit about their NASA website, which could also be useful in our class. It requires very specific information, however, so it might only help with the intense astronomy projects, but it was very interesting to learn about. The site itself is very easy to navigate through, also. It connects you to all the information you will ever possibly need to know about any of th stars of galaxies you want to learn about. It links you to images, statistics, data, and literature dealing with the particular galaxy. After that, I went back to the poster, and I was there for the rest of the session.


 * Day 4: Friday** Today we left Austin!


 * REFLECTION**

The trip to Austin for the AAS conference was a great experience. I really wasn't sure what to expect at an astronomy conference at first. I definitely didn't think that there would be as many people in attendence as there were. I also didn't realized how many different topics there were! The Exhibit Hall was packed with hundreds of different posters everyday! It was incredible! My favorite part of the trip was just talking with other people at the conference. Everyone was so intelligent and knowledgeable on so many topics. I can't believe that we even have that much information on topics such as exoplanets and active galactic nuclei! It was fascinating to hear about though! Presenting our poster was also a very positive experience. I was really nervous about it at first, though. I was surprised at how many people we had come up to us and ask about how we got involved with Spitzer and the project. When we told them about our class, they were excited to hear that high school students have such opportunities to do significant research at such a young age. Many seemed interested in starting programs like ours of their own, which is good to hear. I was glad that I had a chance to talk with Zak Schroeder beforehand. That helped ease my nerves before our poster got put up. He provided insight into what happened during the trip to Pasadena last year.

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