15-Year-Old Student Discovers New Pulsar

For the second time in as many years, a student has made a discovery while participating in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University designed to get students and teachers involved in analyzing data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This time it was high school sophomore Shay Bloxton, who discovered a brand new pulsar. "For Bloxton, the pulsar discovery may be only her first in a scientific career. 'Participating in the PSC has definitely encouraged me to pursue my dream of being an astrophysicist,' she said, adding that she hopes to attend West Virginia University to study astrophysics. Late last year, another West Virginia student, from South Harrison High School, Lucas Bolyard, discovered a pulsar-like object called a rotating radio transient. His discovery also came through participation in the PSC."

Comments

How hard is that?

[timeOday]

This is not a knock on the student in question, since I'm much older than that and never discovered a pulsar.

But.

My impression, which may be very wrong, is that space is so huge, you can point a decent telescope in any direction and discover something, albeit only to a level of detail at which it is indistinguishable from a million other somethings. Thus the quest of astrophysics is not just to discover a new thing, but something new and novel.

(I have often wondered what the earth would look like if we could see every footprint ever planted by mankind. How many "first tracks" I have made?)

Re:How hard is that?

[Monkeedude1212]

You're right to some degree. Problem is that we don't have telescopes on Earth that can just point out to the sky and see all the amazing things that Hubble can. The light pollution is too high. So we are really cut back on how much of space we can actually see here.

Now, she didn't "just point" in the sky, in fact, she had nothing to do with the pointing at all. She took the Data and Analyzed it. She worked it out to be a Pulsar.

Pulsars are very rare. So they waited till the telescope came around to the right point again (a month later) and re-read the data, and re-analyzed it with professionals. She was correct.

Re:hot damn

[Foobar of Borg]

She's quite the cutie. I wonder if she'll be available in three years? ;D

She's in West Virginia. The age of consent there is 16, so you only need to wait a few months. Not that she'll have a pathetic dweeb like you, though.

Re:Pulsar

[fhuglegads]

Old School Nissan reference.. Very nice.

I don't think this girl was born when those were on the road.

Here's how it's done

[syousef]

http://sol.astro.virginia.edu/~rsl4v/PSC/

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwFDuloZpz_BNWE1OTBmMjYtZTg5ZS00NDMxLTg0YzAtZjA3N2ZlYjBmNDdj&hl=en