Hello all. Lately I've been doing my first ever bit of "real" astronomical research and I figured some of you guys might be interested in it.
At my school the seniors are kicked out after AP exams are done to work on their senior projects, which are essentially anything you want to do provided you do 40 hours of it. For my project I called up the one astronomer I know down at the University of Pittsburgh and asked if I could do a project down there. She was nice and said yes.
My first day was Tuesday, I spent the time trying to figure out how UNIX and IRAF works, or at least making a noble attempt (I'd worked a little with the stuff before but nothing really). This all in all culminated yesterday when, after trying to play around with an image and failing spectacularly, it took two grad students a half hour to figure out what I had done and undo it.
Apparently if you are capable of disabling a computer to that extent you are capable of analyzing spectra. So I was given a spectrum of some quasar observed the previous week and given the lovely task of analyzing it. This was, for the record, along with the words "no one's really looked at this quasar before so you'll be the first human being to ever examine it." I just kind of gave a blank look and said "ok" because I couldn't think of much else to say to that!
So today I spent my time working on that trying to figure out the redshift of the quasar and the dust in front of the quasar causing absorption lines. It's rather interesting that I didn't have any major computer code malfunctions today- a minor miracle because I think I was starting to irritate a few grad students working around me. Based on the redshift I calculated (and I calculated right apparently, yay!) the quasar is about 9 billion light years away which REALLY blows my mind.
I started working through the elements seen in the spectra earlier today as well. So far there's been some Aluminum, Zinc, Iron, and a touch of Chromium. There's also a rare Fe II line that shouldn't really be there (some lines appear more often then others, this particular one is a few hundred or so times rarer then the others observed) so that was rather interesting.
So up to date that is my senior project, which is utterly nothing like most people's senior projects but I happen to think is the coolest thing ever. If anyone is at all interested I'm still working there next week so I can post my thoughts on that.
And with that I'd like to say working in the "Dupartmint of Fizzix and Astrolugy" is really fun and anyone who gets the chance should not pass it up!
