News
Friday, May 16, 2008
Goleta Valley Junior High School’s 14-Year-Old Astronomer Uses Robotic Telescope, Plots Light Curves
When she is not enjoying the beach or playing alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, or guitar, April Gadsby keeps tabs on the stars. April, a Goleta Valley Junior High eighth grader, can plot a light curve of an eclipsing binary system using data she gathered halfway across the world using her home computer.
According to Kim Miller, April’s science teacher, April also controls a multi-million dollar robotic telescope located in Australia, emails her results to the National Schools Astronomer of Great Britain, and, on May 31, will give a short talk at a teachers' conference at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara.
April is the first student in the United States to use the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (www.LCOGT.net) for independent research, and probably the youngest person ever to use the Australian telescope.
For her work, she won a gold medal at the Santa Barbara County Science Fair this year and will compete at the California State Science Fair in Los Angeles on May 20.
As part of a class project with the LCOGT, April learned how to use the Muhlenberg telescope in Siding Springs, Australia and became interested in using robotic telescopes to gather data about distant star systems.
She persisted with independent research and worked with astronomers through the LCOGT and Faulkes Telescope program, and also learned how to control the large two-meter Faulkes Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
“I have been interested in astronomy since I was 10 years old,” says an enthusiastic April. “This was the first time in my life that I met real astronomers, not amateurs, and actually got to work with them.” She continued, “It was exciting to use the research-grade telescope and exhilarating to create light curves that actually looked like binary system light curves.”
April worked with two local astronomers, Dr. Martin Hidas and Dr. Rachel Street, and received help over the internet from Daniel Duggan of the Faulkes Telescope project in Great Britain.
Jessica Barton, the Education Outreach Coordinator for LCOGT, says of April, “We are impressed with her enthusiasm and pleased that she was able to use our facilities to do a wonderful research project.”