One of the most wonderful things about astronomy is it’s accessibility. “Doing” astronomy can be done in a way that “Doing” chemistry, physics or geology cannot. In chemistry – whatever the elements or molecules you may be playing around with or examining – you need to be in a particular place to handle the sample or do the experiment. In physics, a lot of what you can do uses very precise tools (although there are some things, like muon detectors!). Geology is very similar to astronomy in that it is a very observational science… and it usually is combined together in school curricula worldwide … but the observational science itself is largely done in the field.
Astronomy used to be similar to these other sciences. Astronomers used to have to travel long distances to invert their sleeping schedules and work night shifts for a week at a telescope site. The better the telescope, likely the further they’d travel and the more inhospitable, albeit romantic, and oxygen deprived the site. Nowadays this is not the case. For most research telescopes, access to observing is through the internet. If it is a very large telescope, there are usually engineers on site working as the astronomer is observing but if it is merely large or smaller, they are usually operated autonomously with an engineer perhaps on call for safety reasons. This means for even the most professional telescopes, researchers access them remotely from their home or office and the smaller the telescope, the more straightforward this remote access can be.
This means that primary data can be gathered directly by anyone who has access to telescopes which, through NextAstro, you can! Students can gather data to undertake relatively small projects up to very open-ended projects with these scopes. There are some considerations to make with each one, but it is entirely possible to undertake Research Experience with real Telescopes whether that be in undergraduate level, high school level or sometimes even at the middle school level! It is also possible to do research as a member of the public.
We are not the only group that provides experiences like this, although we collaborate and share with many other groups that do. Over the years, we have learnt what to do and what not to do and what works and what might not and what doesn’t. We do continue to learn. We offer, through our online learning management system, specific courses surrounding particular topics.
The core topics are:
- Double Stars
- Variable Stars, particularly RR Lyrae
- Exoplanets
- Open clusters
The difficult part usually of the research experience is actually figuring out what question it is that you want to answer. The actual mechanics of the research can be the simpler part. If you are entering the field for the first time then you likely do not have the background experience and contextual knowledge to know what questions are interesting to science. And if you don’t have some practical experience, it would be tricky to know how involved a particular approach might be or how long it might take. The four areas above are clear areas within which students and new researchers can make valid, useful, contributions to astronomical research. Double Stars are the most straightforward, Variable Stars and Open Clusters are a bit more involved but also involve more interesting physics about stars, Exoplanets is conceptually relatively straightforward but it is by far the most tricky and time intensive to collect data for.
Three of the four topics the data collection can be relatively swift, usually within a week or two, which can fit within the timeframe of a semester or term ( 8 to 12 weeks ). The one that does not, but a topic of interest to many students, is Exoplanets. This one takes some planning and data collection ahead of time as an exoplanet transit event may only happen once a week and that time may be cloudy. But the others are relatively straightforward. We recommend setting up data collection for Exoplanets about six months before the start of a term-long (8 to 12 week) research experience. For a nine month or year long research experience, Exoplanets are a fine topic to undertake.
For those who want to stretch further and attempt their own open-ended research topic, we can support this as well and help with the design, implementation and direction of the project and advise on whether it may or may not be achievable within a given framework or timeframe. As this is a bit more involved and customised, this is a larger investment on our side, which we are happy to do!
Many of the research experiences that conclude, although not required, can result in publications by students in various journals. We outline some of the articles we have been involved with in the past on our publication page here. For double stars, these are contributions to discovering the orbits of stars that are orbiting around each other over time. For RR Lyraes, these studies contribute to our capacity to measure distances in astronomy, For exoplanets, this allows us to refine our estimates of when planets transits to help space telescopes and potentially discover other planets. For Open Clusters, the research helps us better understand stellar evolution throughout the universe.
If you, or your students, want to participate in such research, please contact us!
