Planetarium
National Honors

As Part of the RBSE Program Sponsored by the NSF and The NOAO, students help astronomers discover 73 novae in Andromeda Galaxy. Images of galaxies are collected using the NSF's 0.9-meter telescope with a CCD camera on Kitt Peak. Students search images from successive epochs for novae by using a blinking process where images are rapidly alternated using a computer. 

A nova is created in a binary star system, where a white dwarf has a nearby companion star. As the companion loses hydrogen gas, the gas falls onto the white dwarf, causing an instability near its surface. An explosive nuclear reaction occurs, causing the white dwarf to shine brightly as a nova.

When a nova appears, its coordinates are recorded. A light curve for each nova is then created by measuring its brightness in each epoch in which it appears. Currently, the RBSE participants are searching for novae in the Andromeda Galaxy, a nearby spiral galaxy similar in stellar content and size to our own Milky Way.