It's just continually fascinating.
Professor Kara Beauchamp and Cole Horan
have their minds set on exploring a
place that's 5,000 light-years from
Earth. What we're kind of looking at is
the Rosette Nebula. A nebula is a region
in space that is mostly comprised of gas
and dust, basically. They're working on
techniques used by astronomers to better
understand the region. The Rosette Nebula is
a star-forming region, so new stars are
always being born in our galaxy and
they're usually born in these kind of
compact regions that have a lot of gas
and dust. They're studying everything
from the electron density to the
magnetic field strength of the nebula
for the Cornell Summer Research
Institute. The duo is also diving into
data that's available online for the
Rosette Nebula. The researchers are
trying to discover what the nebula
actually looks like. We want to kind of
know, get a better idea of the, 3d
structure of the nebula. Because when we look
at this nebula that is very very far
away all we can see is, kind of, the 2d
projection of just what it would look.
It's a picture. So there have been
some studies on 3d structures and some
models proposed and we kind of want to
confirm some of those and maybe make
some of our own. We really just look at
light coming from these different
objects, so the Rosette Nebula, I'll call an object, and we're looking at the
light, we're looking at the light in lots
of different wave lengths and different,
so, different wavelengths of light can be
x-rays or radio waves or infrared or
ultraviolet light or visible light. The
two are spending the ten weeks of the
summer institute discovering as much as
possible. That means working through
physics equations, practicing research
presentations to fellow institute
participants, visiting a nearby
observatory, and reading a lot of
literature. He was willing to plunge in,
you know, sort of with his block plan
skills of learning a whole bunch of
stuff in a week and getting up to speed
with astronomy and he's gotten to a
point, you know,
he is learning the technical jargon
of astrophysics. And as Horan keeps his
eyes to the sky, he's just thankful for
the opportunity. So I think it's a pretty
unique experience that it's one-on-one
and that I can kind of influence the
direction it goes. This is just one story
detailing all of the summer research
projects going on at Cornell College.
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