Student Projects & Research

Emma Cho, Class of 2025

Emma, a junior at Piner High School and STEM Level 3, created this astro photograph of the NGC2403 galaxy. From Emma: “For this image, I focused on an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis called NGC2403. It is an outlying member of the M81 Group and is approximately 8 million light-years away. I used Piner's SPARQ Center equipment to complete this project and capture the photo. I utilized the extension, RealVNC to be able to log into the SPARQ Center's computer and use software like PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop, etc. I picked this subject because I was very intrigued by this galaxy and its spiraling shape. From this process, I learned that capturing astrophotography photos is more complex than I initially thought.”

Scarlett Oliva, Class of 2025

Scarlett is a junior who completed a Stem Level 3 astrophotography project. From Scarlett: “The star that I choose to be my subject is a horsehead nebula. A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas. My nebula in particular looks like a horse head with a brighter star behind the gas, giving a good visual effect. To get this image I worked with Kurt Kruger and Steve Smith. We used Piner’s telescope to take many photos of this nebula. Once getting the images we chose the best quality photos and used various programs on the computer to get the right placement, make it look sharper, unlock the color in the images, and even photoshop the image a bit, giving the image a cleaner look. Capturing the image took a couple of nights, to make sure that there were enough photos to go off of. The hard part was not getting the image, but instead, all of the editing and fixing process to get the finished product. The total process took a couple of hours a week for about a month. I chose the horsehead nebula because when researching the different types of nebula, this one was the most eye-catching. I had never seen a nebula look like this before, and I was wondering why it was so different from all of the other nebulas. I learned a lot from this process. I didn't know much about astrophotography, or nebulas themselves. Through this project, it pushed me to do more research on the matter, and I learned many cool things. When first seeing other astrophotography photos I thought they came straight out of the telescope colorful and sharply detailed, but I learned that there is so much more than that.”

Julie Bui, Class of 2023

STEM Level II - M74 Astrophotography (May 2023)