Lincoln-Way North Students Make 'Superstar' Discovery

Three  Lincoln-Way North High School seniors will have an unusual achievement to put on their college applications: the students, led by teacher Peggy Piper, helped astronomers identify a variable star, a rare type of star with regular changes in brightness.

Justin Christensen, Rebecca Rosignolo and Joey Romero, all 17-year-old seniors at North, identified the star while participating in a program called NASA/Infrared Processing and Analysis Center Teacher Archive Research Program, or NITARP. They presented their findings in January at the American Astronomical Society winter meeting in Seattle.

The students’ discovery came as a surprise to all involved. “When I got back, everyone would ask me, ‘What’d you do, discover a star?'” Christensen said.

Not exactly. Scientists knew the star existed as one of millions in the galaxy. But never before did they have evidence it was a variable star. Now the star is dubbed NITARP-V1 in honor of the students’ contributions.

The evidence was found during an intensive three-day workshop at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in August. Rosignolo and  Romero, along with their NITARP partners from Niles West High School, pored over images made by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Spitzer Space Telescope trails the earth in its orbit around the sun, Piper explained. The telescope is always pointed away from the sun so that it can produce still images of the stars in the galaxy.

The students worked with real astronomers to help “mine the data” provided by the telescope, Piper said. About 60 students from middle schools, high schools and community colleges across the country worked on astronomy projects.

“The real goal of the project is to get teachers and kids interested in real research and encourage them to go into the sciences, technology, engineering and math,” Piper said.

Piper, who teaches physics, astronomy and meteorology, was one of 14 teachers nationwide to be selected to work with NASA scientists on this real-life research project. In January 2010, she attended the American Astronomical Society convention in Washington, D.C. and met the astronomers they would be working with: D.W. Hoard from Caltech and Steve Howell from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. The astronauts chose their project, which was an “offshoot of what they were researching,” Piper said.

On returning home, Piper invited any students at North who wished to work on the project to meet regularly after school. Christensen, Rosignolo and Romero became the “core group,” Piper said.

The students created a wiki, an online space where they could communicate with students at Niles West and a middle school and post their experiences. The Web address is www.tinyurl.com/varstar.

“These guys did a great job communicating amongst themselves and other schools,” Piper said.

The students spent last spring and summer learning background information and the computer programs needed to interpret the data. Then in August, over three days at Caltech, they used the software to look at 6,447 images of 242 stars.

“We had to spend hours plugging in coordinates and looking at stars,” Rosignolo said.

At first, every time the figures detected a change in a star’s brightness, the kids became excited.

“Personally, I think I discovered a bajillion variable stars,” Rosignolo said.

But there was a wobble in the telescope that caused false readings. When the students performed mathematical tests to compensate for the wobble, the stars turned out to be ordinary stars.

That is, until the very last day. Romero and his partner were examining a field of stars when they found one that appeared to be variable. After all the false positives, they were cautious. “We didn’t want to get too excited because it looked like one of the fake ones,” Romero said.

They alerted the astronomers, who performed more tests on the images. “They did everything possible there was to do to prove it was not a variable star, but they couldn’t,” Romero said.

The astronomers don’t accept a positive reading until all other possibilities have been ruled out, Piper explained. “After we left, we still got emails from the astronomers who continued to try to disprove that it was a variable star,” she said.

Romero said he wasn’t disappointed that the star wasn’t named after him and his partner.  The name NITARP-V1 reflects the work of everyone in the group, he said. “I think it’s fair because all of us did a lot of work,” he said.

Romero said scientists believe the star is an intrinsic variable, meaning that the pulsations of light are caused by chemical reactions within the star rather than from outside, or extrinsic, influences. The star is also probably very young, as far as stars go, he said.

The star changes brightness about every two hours, Rosignolo said.

The students created a poster describing their research process, and their Niles West partners made a second poster telling about the star. They presented these posters at the AAS meeting in January.

The students said they learned much from their experience, and not only about science. They met people from all over the country and networked with scientists from top universities.

“All of us kind of grew in places where we were lacking or thought we were lacking,” said Romero, who hopes to be a veterinarian someday.

“It was hard stuff but it was challenging,” said Christensen, who wants to study forensic chemistry.

“It was amazing,” said Rosignolo. Though she doesn’t plan to go into science, she said the experienced helped build her confidence.

Piper said the biggest science lesson the students learned was to ignore “errant data.” “It was hard for these guys to throw away bad data,” she said.

The NITARP program not only benefitted the participating students but also raised awareness throughout the school about science and research, the students said.

“Our classmates were really excited for us,” said Romero. “I think they appreciated what we did and what we found.”

Piper summed it up best: “You guys were superstars!” she said.