Edward A's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: How is Astronomical Research Conducted from Earth? BASIS Advisor: Sheri Nelson Internship Location: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Onsite Mentor: Dr. Noel Richardson

Project Abstract

Space is all around us. We can look up at the night sky and see it all around us. Containing planets, nebulas, and stars, there is so much we do and do not know within our solar system and beyond. As humans, we even dream of venturing into the cosmos and exploring this uncharted realm for ourselves. In our time, however, we’re nowhere near leaving the borders of our solar system and the celestial objects around us are thousands of kilometers if not lightyears away from us. Despite this, we have managed to learn so much about these space and celestial bodies. In this project, I plan to get a first-hand view of how this research occurs. I will be spending my project term at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University working with astronomy professor, Doctor Noel Richardson and some of his students. I will learn how data is collected using instruments on campus, how to analyze the data collected from the instruments and public data from NASA, and how to process the data via Python. I will learn to use these high-tech telescopes and once we learn how to collect data, we will spend most of our time interpreting and processing the data.