Christine Ye, a junior at Eastlake High School in Sammamish, Washington shares her experience in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC).
During her participation in the PSC, she loved getting to know fellow students from all over the country along with the mentors who supported her as she designed and worked on her own pulsar-related projects. Her specific research interests include high-energy astrophysical phenomena and compact objects.
Joining the PSC team in Hawaii this past January at the 235th AAS (American Astronomical Society)conference was a highlight for Christine. Looking back on her conference experience, she says “I learned so much from the conference speakers and workshops during that week, and also got to interact with so many cool researchers. I went to sessions covering topics from studying stellar variability and exoplanets with TESS to new theoretical simulations on the launching of relativistic jets from black holes.” Alongside conference sessions, she was able to present some of her research with PSC at a poster session.
PSC has allowed Christine to further explore her research interests while gaining unique and valuable experience. She hopes to study physics in college and eventually move into astrophysics research where she hopes to learn more about observation and instrumentation.
Overall, Christine learned the most about radio astronomy and observations during her time in the PSC. “I've gotten to essentially follow the full pipeline, from the raw filter bank files to searching with PRESTO and reviewing the candidates and have used tons of cool software like psrchive and TEMPO”, states Christine.
About the PSC
The Pulsar Search Collaboratory is a program that allows high school students and teachers to analyze pulsar data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The Pulsar Search Collaboratory, a partnership between West Virginia University and the Green Bank Observatory, is funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, please visit: https://pulsars.nanograv.org/