Do an "Out of This World" Project this Year!
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| The Central Texas Astronomical Society (CTAS) conducts research at its Observatory site near Clifton in Central Texas. Would you like to participate? If you will be in eighth grade or high school this fall, and you are really interested in astronomy or computers, let us hear from you!
We are working on projects that involve everything from research with the Internet, to observing with our observatory telescope, and development of software based on the Linux operating system.
We have projects that can be done by school students both from home and at our Observatory site. There is no charge for participating, but students need to be highly motivated and able to work independently, with guidance from our members. For more information, contact Dean Chandler
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Current 2010 Research and Support Projects
(Do you have an idea?)
Extra-solar Planets (exo-planets)
More than two hundred planets have been discovered around other stars. In a few cases these actually pass in front of the star, blocking a small amount of its light. We have studied subtle aspects of the light curves to learn more about these systems. We are beginning to do projects with data from the Kepler Space Telescope.
Pulsating Dwarf Stars
White dwarf stars are hot, earth-sized stars that have run out of fuel, and are very slowly cooling into oblivion. As they pass through certain very narrow temperature ranges, many of them pulsate slightly in intensity. We use these pulsations to measure the cooling rate, to probe the interiors of these stars, and even to detect planets around them. We do this work in collaboration with the University of Texas and McDonald Observatory. See the "Links" page of our website for more details on this work.
Installation of Observing and Telescope Control Software
We have found the Linux operating system particularly useful for some of our work, since the software is freely available and reliable. For these reasons, it is also great for students wanting to understand computing. We are currently involved with installing several available packages as well as modifying some to fit our own needs.
Congratulations!
Zane Wins
CTAS member, Zane Foster, has been working this year on his Science Fair Project, "Worlds Away". Zane is a student at McGregor Middle School. The project explores the light curves of exo-planets that transit their parent stars.
Zane Foster of McGregor Middle School won the Texas Science and Engineering Fair (TSEF)in the Junior Level (i.e. middle school) division for Physics and Astronomy. The finals for the competition were held April 16th, 2008 in San Antonio, and included students from as far away as El Paso. Our hats go off to Zane for his hard work, to his parents Heide and Ottis for a lot of transportation and much other support, and to CTAS member, Brad Walter, for his untiring instruction and mentoring.
A great performance!!!