POCA

A Partnership in Observational and Computational Astronomy

The PAARE Summer 2011 Internship Program

May - July 2011

The summer 2011 NSF PAARE Internship Program included a total of six students from not only South Carolina State University but also from schools in California, Tennessee and New Jersey on site at either SC State in Orangeburg, South Carolina, or at Clemson Universityin Clemson, South Carolina. These interns included:

STUDENT
TIER
HOME INSTITUTION
HOME STATE
RESEARCH SITE
Guillermo (Will) Hernandez
I
Montclair State U
New Jersey
SC State U.
Charles Kurgatt
II
SC State U.
North Carolina
Clemson
Jared Lalmansingh
II
SC State U.
Trinidad
SC State U.
Maria Martinez
I
Sacramento City College
California
SC State U.
Bryan Pugh
II
SC State U.
South Carolina
SC State U.
Ciera Starkey
I
Tennessee State U
Tennessee
SC State U.

Interns at SC State received an overview of the field of astronomy including weekly written assignments related to their research and a weekly journal club reading, with each student taking their turn leading the group discussion. Additionally, each student summarized their projects with an individual PowerPoint presentation and poster which they took home to their institution to present to their faculty and student colleagues. The student research at SC State in the summer of 2011 concentrated on light curves acquired by Drs. Walter and Cash from the NASA’s Kepler Observatory of RV Tauri and Semi-Regular variable stars.

bryan
ciera
jared
maria
will
Bryan preparing his talk
Ciera researching her Kepler variable star.
Jared in thought over a programming issue.
Maria at the her Linux workstation examining light curves.
Will working on an RV Tauri light curve.

Charles Kurgatt conducted his research of modeling the disk around a young star under the direction of Dr. Sean Brittain in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University.

A highlight of the summer included a trip to Clemson by the interns based at SC State. This included a tour and overnight stay on the Clemson campus, meeting with the astronomy graduate students as well as talks by students and faculty from both institutions. An observing session was lead by Dr. Dieter Hartmann at the Clemson Remote Observing Room. Dr. Hartmann walked the interns through a tour of the southern hemisphere’s sky while accessing the SARA-South Telescope located at Cerro Tololo in Chile, in real time over the Web.

Dr. Hartmann

 

 

Dr. Hartmann explaining remote observing to the interns.

 

 

 

 

Students and faculty from Clemson and SC State enjoy lunch at a restaurant near the Clemson campus.

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