Monday July 18:
- Quick video about Green Bank Telescope
- See the Green Bank Telescope (GBT)
- Took tour, 1 mile long road of different telescopes, including the 40 ft telescope and the 20 meter telescope
- Learn how to use one of smaller telescopes (40 ft)
- Used the telescope to try to detect neutral hydrogen. Got an example that didn’t show much hydrogen detection as one of the parts had been changed and no one knew how to fix it, but when we went down later, it had been fixed.
- While learning how to use the telescope we also got a better understanding of Right Ascension (RA) and Declination (Dec) right ascension and declination correspond to where the object is in the sky, like longitude and latitude
- Pulsar Plots:
- Learn about pulsar plots, the parts of the plots as well as what they should and should not look like
- Learned about the individual pulsar plots within the data we were studying
- Pulsar Plots 2:
- Looked at single pulse profiles and learned how to identify pulsars, noise, and RFI’s
- Life Cycle of Star Activity:
- A group of us became a ball of wandering molecules and eventually formed the core of a star and then went through the life of the star until we became a pulsar
- Basic Science Activity:
- Almost like detective work, had to get into groups and then we were given checks written by a fictional couple who had some of their checks in an envelope. This showed us how given same material, people can come up with different theories based on their experiences, this is how it is in science, everyone can get the exact same data, it is the person’s experiences that change the story. Also getting together and exchanging data can give you a better view of the overall picture.
- 40 ft telescope observing:
- We found neutral hydrogen in part of the Milky Way, still need to analyze data
- We ended up with a graph that showed a peak at a certain frequency signifying neutral hydrogen where we were looking (at what Right Ascension and Declination we were looking at with the radio telescope)