KAILUA-KONA — The formation of secluded starburst galaxies, the relationship between a nebula’s metallicity and its shape and size and the use of near infrared spectroscopy to study the accretion disk that orbits a black hole.
At first glance, these look like topics that would be explored by researchers who have spent years, if not decades, studying the skies above.
But, in fact, they’re proposals that came from a handful of Kealakehe High School sophomores whose curiosity was awarded Tuesday with an opportunity to find answers to their questions and work on astronomy’s cutting edge.
“Just to see they’re putting together clearly undergraduate — or graduate or in some cases — Ph.D-level proposals for telescope time in six weeks as high school sophomores, that changes the conversation about what we can expect of these kids,” said Justin Brown, Kealakehe High School’s career and technical education coordinator. “And that’s what we really want to do … we can expect great things out of these students when you expect that, right? They’re going to step up to those expectations.”
Maunakea Scholars, a program by Maunakea Observatories, invites students from 10 schools across the state to submit proposals for independent research projects they could explore through resources available at the Maunakea Observatories. Students who submit proposals compete against their peers at the school and each school is guaranteed telescope time.
While this is the program’s third year, it’s the first year students at Kealakehe High School have participated.
Once students submit their proposals, the proposals are reviewed and scored on their feasibility, creativity and how student driven the proposal was.
Mary Beth Laychak, outreach manager at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Maunakea Scholars program organizer, said they reviewed 12 proposals from Kealakehe students.
And the caliber of submissions, said Laychak, was outstanding.
Even in the program’s first year, she said, they weren’t expecting the level of creativity that came about.
“Each year, the bar just gets higher and higher,” she said. “Some of the proposals that we’ll even talk about today are the proposals that my colleagues at (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) are actually, actively doing research in. So they’re on hot topics, very cutting-edge astronomy and work in the field.”
And the students coming away from Tuesday’s ceremony with telescope time to explore their proposals said they were excited about the opportunity.
“We put some time in and we are glad that the fruits of our labor have paid off,” said Mason Solmonson, who along with Nathan Weir, was awarded telescope time for their proposal to use near-infrared spectroscopy to explore the composition of accretion disks orbiting black holes of different sizes. “And we hope that this time will be useful for us, and maybe we can find something out of this. It might be a fun experience.”
The pair of sophomores said its research proposal came partially out of a separate activity they’re involved in, InvenTeams, in which they’re applying near-infrared spectroscopy technology in a way to evaluate blood-alcohol content.
They said they wanted to apply that same technology to astronomy and, given their interest in black holes, settled their focus on comparing the accretion disks around black holes of different sizes to see if there’s a difference in their composition because of the size.
The other awardees included Shanen Arellano, who will be studying the relationship between the metallicity — a term referring to elements that aren’t hydrogen or helium — of a star-forming nebula and the nebula’s shape and size.
Amanda Schiff will be exploring the composition and formation of secluded starburst galaxies. Unlike normal galaxies which create just a couple of stars a year, starburst galaxies can produce 100 times that, according to NASA. But while typical starburst galaxies are often triggered from a collision with a separate galaxy, NASA has identified one that’s relatively isolated, leading astronomers to speculate about its cause.
“I think it’s really cool that we’re exploring things that haven’t been looked at too much,” said Schiff. “It gives us more of an edge when discussing our projects because people can learn about them at the same time as you.”
