Undergraduate Scientists

Preparation

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:03:06 -0500

In a few days, it will be 2013 and a week closer to something I have been looking forward to for a while: the 221st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. From January 6 through 10, the meeting will take place in Long Beach, California. A few months ago, Dr. Wright told me that he was going to send me and Eunkyu, my fellow student researcher, to the meeting, and I was thrilled. Attending meetings and presenting your work is one of the best parts of undergraduate research!

We made sure to register and submit our abstracts early. Eunkyu and I have branched off in our duties in research, so we will be presenting separate posters. This past week, I have been working on my poster. Once I fleshed out the content and scattered my figures around, it was just a small struggle against the distribution of white space. Over the summer, I took a required technical communication class; making this particular poster has put some of the design elements from that class to use.

The poster is not yet complete, but I can't wait to hold the physical copy. I can't wait to stand next to it during my poster session on Wednesday, January 9. I can't wait to read the other posters, to meet people and learn of their research. I can't wait to attend the reception for undergrads. I can't wait to sit in on plenary sessions and lectures. I can't wait.

Scale is Always Good

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:51:44 -0500

Before getting back into my usual posts, I wanted to share something this week:

Source - NASA/JPL

In two of my classes, I have been hearing about and researching missions relevant to exoplanets. There is New Worlds Observer, a proposed NASA mission that will send a starshade thousands of kilometers in front of a space telescope, blocking out much of a host star's light so that we can image the planets. There is Gaia, an ESA mission to be launched in 2013 that will map the positions of a thousand million stars over five years, which will identify any stars that are changing motion due to the gravitaional pull of planets. There is FINESSE, another proposed NASA mission that will study a few hundred exoplanets and their atmospheres using transits.

Source - NASA and Northrop Grumman - New Worlds Observer artist's concept

There is a lot to look forward to. But whenever I see that first image, which shows how large our search area is for most exoplanets compared to our Galaxy, I simply tend to lean back in my seat, and think, once again: There is a lot to look forward to.

Uphill

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:45:23 -0500

I didn't think this semester would be so different. My course load seemed reasonable, and I even added yoga to balance out my five main classes. But I seemed to have lost a grasp on time management. I've felt basic college stress before, although not like this. This semester, I've often been on the brink of tears. I haven't exactly neglected research, but I haven't been giving as much time for it. I can't quite decide which class to work on first, so the work becomes scrambled, and I somehow have made it to the last few weeks. I've stopped blogging.

Anyone deciding to start research will worry about time management. I've reached the point where responsibilities have started clashing. After two years, I no longer do research mainly for the experience - I want to contribute. My classes are challenging but that is exciting, and, for the past year, I've enjoyed blogging. Valuing these three aspects of my life, I now have all these priorities but I don't know how to sort them. However, as Ron points out:

Source - Tumblr

It seems straightforward to compare stressful situations to a steep climb. Instead of thinking about a figurative hill, I remembered one I have personally hiked up. In my junior year of high school, I trekked in Tiger Leaping Gorge, located near Lijiang, Yunnan, in the south of China. One of the tougher parts of the route was termed "28 bends". It was a winding uphill struggle, making the heart put in effort to pump and the lungs reap for thin air at a high altitude I was not used to. There was no way I could have gone through all 28 bends without stopping. It's fine to sit down on a boulder and rest.

This hill is not infinite; we will all eventually pick ourselves up and keep going. At the start of the semester, I put up the two following items on my door. I was afraid I would lose sight of the message I had in mind back, and indeed I had for awhile. Now, the reason I placed them there has come back to me: Remind yourself everyday where you're going, and why you're going there.

History Lessons

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:30:01 -0500

In my Planets and Planetary System Formation class, we have been discussing methods of exoplanet detection. My professor brought up a paper written by Otto Struve. It was published in The Observatory in October 1952 - 50 years ago from this month. I am unfamiliar with this man's work, but he had proposed "A Project of High-Precision Stellar Radial Velocity Work." As my professor scrolled through the PDF, he summarized Struve's points.

Struve argued that we can detect planets larger than Jupiter around other stars with the Doppler effect, a basic principle used in today's radial velocity technique. He argued that there is no reason why these planets cannot be a lot closer to their host stars than Jupiter is to the Sun, that their periods can be 1 day. Plenty of Jupiter-mass planets have been found so far, orbiting so close to their stars that their orbits are only a few days long, making their surface temperatures high and giving them the name "hot Jupiters." Then, Struve writes, "There would, of course, also be eclipses." Those, of course, would be transits.

I was actually on the edge of my seat, thoroughly impressed. History was never a strong subject of mine, but more and more, I'm appreciating scientific history. Because of my astrobiology class, as we began our unit on the ancient Earth and brought back scenes from my previous geoscience courses, I'm also more confident that I like history investigated by science. We discussed the proposed impact on Earth that formed the moon 4.51 billion years ago. At that instant, a series of questions raced through my mind that must have come up in the minds of those who found the answers that I saw on the powerpoint presentation. How did the moon form? Why is there an atmosphere? And when the picture of early Earth appeared, I realized that - obviously - the Earth didn't have the familiar green continents. Plants must have had an origin; when was this and how did plants rise?

Source - NASA/JPL

It was a thrilling chain of questions, the answers to which I once found ordinary. So many things we know about today began with a question. Some chose to use science to seek an explanation. A conclusion seems to be that there was a vast, rich history of the universe that we played no part in. History lessons given by science seem to reinforce the fact that our existence is rather insignificant. But I prefer to think of it as humbling.

The opportunity that we have to learn about this history is so precious, wouldn't you agree?

Career Fair Reception

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:44:06 -0500

At some point during the semester, I would be walking around campus and find myself surrounded by people dressed in suits or formal clothing. I would realize that it was career fair week. Many of my peers have traded in their T-shirt and jeans for a suit and tie, flip-flops for business heels. This year, the Eberly College of Science provided a Fall Career Days Science Employer Reception for science students.

The 2012 Friedman Lecture

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 20:33:31 -0500

The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics hosts a series of presentations funded by the Ronald M. and Susan J. Friedman Outreach Fund in Astronomy. Free to the public, they are the Friedman lectures. Information on all lectures is available here.

This year, Heidi Hammel, Executive Vice President of AURA, Inc. (The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy), presented the "James Webb Space Telescope: NASA's Next Great Observatory." Also known as JWST, the telescope featured below will accept the torch of observational astronomy from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source - NASA

Before the lecture, a group of us had the chance to dine with Dr. Hammel for the monthly women in astronomy meeting. Thursday, September 13, 2012, left me with both an introduction to an amazing upcoming instrument that will further advance astronomy as well as insight to sharing and communicating science.

Keeping Up

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 20:30:00 -0500

Over the weekend, I saw a post on Life, Unbounded, a science blog I follow. It featured these two images taken by the Curiosity rover:

Source - NASA JPL

The first image is a self-portrait taken with the camera on its arm, featured in the second picture. When I first saw these pictures, I thought, "It's so weird." The self-portrait is very similar to what some of us would do while we're visiting different places - it's typical tourist behavior. Suddenly, Curiosity's presence on Mars seemed concrete to me, and I felt another wave of awe. As I go to classes and work through my daily routines, Curiosity is busy exploring another planet.

If you are interested, here are some ways to follow the rover:

twitter / facebook / official site

Speaking of social media, exoplanets.org has been getting more involved starting this summer. Ultimately, we are a website, and we want people to get the most out of it. Follow our twitter (@ExoplanetsOrg) to get updates on when we add planets or make changes to the database. You should also "like" us on facebook, although that is still under development.

Updating facebook and tweeting? I get to do that for research from time to time. I guess you can't predict what you will end up doing in research, but that's what makes it exciting.

Touchdown Confirmed

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:38:20 -0500

Welcome to the first post of the semester! Posts will now be on Wednesdays instead of Mondays. It seems like, despite the semester has just started, we already need to think about our activities for next summer. Internship? Study abroad? A job? Based on my experience, this post will make some recommendations for the combination of summer classes and summer research. As for the seemingly unrelated title - well, some events happened this summer that I just couldn't neglect to mention.

Alien AstronoMysteries

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:15:34 -0500

At the end of the spring semester, my academic adviser told me about Alien AstronoMysteries, a Penn State science summer camp to be held in the last week of June.

Brendan Mullan, the camp director, is a graduate student in our astronomy department. In April, he won the National FameLab Astrobiology Competition, which is designed to find the best science communicator among young scientists in the United States.

Alien AstronoMysteries investigates various topics from astrobiology. Extremophiles, habitable zones, exoplanets - yup, count me in.

Above: buttons with art by Nahks (our department's Instructional Designer), handed out on the last day of camp

2012 Venus Transit

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:10:43 -0500

The National University of Singapore (NUS) organized an event for the Venus transit, hosting activties that began on the evening of June 5 until the end of the transit on June 6. Because I live closeby, getting to NUS was convenient. On the 5th, my parents and I first went to see a small exhibition that showcased the photography of a local amateur astronomer. Later that night, NUS held the Venus Transit Symphony, composed by Dr. Robert Casteels, at what I would describe as a big city version of the HUB lawn at Penn State's University Park campus.

Countdown

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:42:36 -0500

Long time no see! I'm currently in Singapore, and in two days, something very exciting will take place.

Progress

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:02:38 -0500

Finals week is here again, and I still remember when last semester was ending and when this blog was almost a month old. For over five months I have been blogging, and hopefully you've had as much fun reading as I have had writing. The details of whether or not I will be continuing are not yet sorted out, but I will gladly keep going!

I will be spending the second half of summer back on campus to keep doing research. Astrofest will be in July - there will be plenty of activities for me to report on.

While I won't be posting every Monday for the upcoming weeks, I will be dropping a few thoughts every now and then, and things should resume when I get back around mid-June.

In one of my earliest posts, I included a plot from exoplanets.org. That illustrated the growth of discoveries since the 90s up to 2011. Now I've added an updated plot, going up to mid-2012. Numbers have shifted, espcially because of Kepler's results. This year is far from over, so expect that last bar to increase. Perhaps in another five or six months, we can see again how it has grown.

Soft Spot

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:28:02 -0500

What is your favorite exoplanet?

This week, I went around the astronomy department, visiting several members of the EOD group, and asked them that question. While I sometimes post about recent discoveries, I wanted to present "older" planets because they are always worth knowing. Instead of compiling a more random list, I thought that a group of planets which carry personal meaning to my team would be a good starting point. Going from there, I found out why they chose research in this field. So, to learn more about some exoplanets and more about my group, continue reading and find out!

Undergraduate Exhibition

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:12:16 -0500

On Wednesday afternoon, Eunkyu and I presented our poster on the Exoplanet Orbit Database at the undergraduate exhibition, an event Penn State holds annually to showcase students' involvement with research. Poster categories include physical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, arts and humanities, and health and life sciences. We present our posters to the judges, and prizes are awarded to the top posters.

Grad School

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:43:32 -0500

Well, my senior year is winding down and I graduate in about three weeks. Unfortunately, that means that within the next three weeks I have a whole series of exams and presentations and projects to get done. That means this is probably going to be my last entry in this blog. Hopefully someone has found it useful. So without further delay, here's my last topic:

This isn't exactly about research, but it's probably of central importance to many undergrads who are doing research. I'm talking about graduate school. Specifically how you go about choosing a graduate school. There are plenty of resources out there about actually applying to grad school and how to do well on GRE's and that sort of thing, but I've found very little on how to choose where to apply and ultimately where to go. So having just finished going through all that, I thought I'd talk a little about what I learned in the process.

When I began looking at grad schools, I had no idea where to start. So I talked to my research adviser and asked him where there was interesting research going on. Try to find someone knowledgeable about the kind of research you want to pursue and ask them where it's being done. You can't just apply based on how "big name" a school is, because that doesn't necessarily mean they have any faculty who are doing the kind of work you want to do.

Once you have a good starting point, go on the department's websites and open up the research page and see who's doing what. Most professors will have a page where they talk about their research interests. They'll often list some of their recent publications, so maybe try to skim over at least the abstracts on some of those. Once you've found a bunch of places where you think there's research you like, go ahead and apply.

Then after you hear back you get to make the decision. Most schools it seems will invite you on a trip to visit them if you accept them. On those trips, you'll get to meet the grad students and faculty in the department, and probably get shown around the area a bit. These trips are important, because you're going to spend the next several years of your life in this department. Exactly what you make your decision based on is up to you, but remember that the most important thing is to find a place where you'll have an adviser doing research that you like. I personally tried to pick the place where there were the most options for advisers doing interesting research so I have back up plans in case my first choices don't have room for new members or something like that. But whatever you choose, I hope you enjoy graduate school and have a great experience for the next several years.