C. UNC Teaching and Research
C.1 Introductory Astronomy Curriculum
Over the past two years, co-PI Reichart and the Skynet team
have undertaken a wholesale expansion and modernization
UNC’s introductory astronomy curriculum: we have
redesigned two 100-level courses, created two more 100level courses, including an experiential education (EE)
course; created tools that have become the centerpiece of a
500-level course; and have created online versions of three
of these 100-level courses through Carolina Courses Online
(CCO). Taking advantage of the new undergraduate
science requirement, Introduction to Astronomy is now split
into two semester-long lecture courses:
UNC-CH/Skynet
Undergrad RA
Training &
Recruitment
Pyramid
GRAD SCHOOL/
STEM CAREER
GRB
Group
RESEARCH AND
ADVANCED COURSES
ERIRA
ASTR 102
ASTR 101 & 101L
Skynet, PROMPT, SOAR, SALT
INTRODUCTORY
COURSES
FACILITIES
ASTR 101: Introduction to Astronomy: The Solar System
Celestial motions of the earth, sun, moon, and planets, nature of light, ground and space-based
telescopes, comparative planetology, the earth, the moon, planets and dwarf planets, asteroids, comets,
planetary system formation, extrasolar planets, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)
ASTR 102: Introduction to Astronomy: Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology
The sun, stellar observables, star birth, evolution, and death, novae and supernovae, white dwarfs,
neutron stars, black holes, the Milky Way galaxy, normal galaxies, active galaxies and quasars, dark
matter, dark energy, cosmology, early universe. Prerequisite: ASTR 101.
These courses are designed to be taught in large lecture halls of up to 250 students. ASTR 101/102
includes dozens of in-class demonstrations, which have proved effective at conveying otherwise difficult
concepts and at generating discussion, which is particularly important in a large lecture hall setting.
ASTR 101L: Introduction to Astronomy: Laboratory
In 2008, North Carolina Space Grant awarded a Higher Education/Course Development Program
(HECDP) grant to expand and modernize our undergraduate astronomy curriculum. This enabled us to
significantly incorporate PROMPT and Skynet into our laboratory courses. The centerpiece of this effort
has been our modernization of ASTR 101L: Our Place in Space, which has served approximately 500
undergraduates, primarily non-majors, since Fall 2009.
We developed a set of seven new labs, five of which are primarily PROMPT and Skynet-based. The labs
strongly reinforce both the new ASTR 101/102 lecture curriculum and each other. We produced video
tutorials and developed an easy-to-use, web-based graphing accessory. Students make full use of our
professional-quality web-based image reduction and analysis system, Afterglow, which allows them to
align and manipulate images, conduct astrometric measurements of parallax and proper motion, make
movies from a series of observations, and perform fully-calibrated batch photometry on variable sources
and analyze their light curves. Full lab descriptions are available at: http://skynet.unc.edu/ASTR101L/
The new ASTR 101L labs are available to any of the PROMPT Collaboration institutions that wish to
incorporate or adapt them for their astronomy curricula: Appalachian State University, Elon University,
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Fayetteville State University, Guilford College, Guilford Technical Community College, North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical State University, UNC-Asheville, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, UNCPembroke, Western Carolina University, and Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. Each of these
institutions has been guaranteed approximately 400 hours per year of observing time on PROMPT.
Since these labs primarily rely on web-based control of remote facilities and web-based analysis software,
they need not be carried out on campus. We have developed a fully online version of ASTR 101L for
Carolina Courses Online (CCO), which serves people of all ages and backgrounds across the state and
country, as well as members of our military stationed abroad. It is a unique opportunity for distancelearning students to fulfill their general college laboratory requirement without having to be on campus.
We have also developed online versions of the ASTRO 101 and ASTR 102 lecture courses, which include
videos of the in-class demonstrations. CCO now offers online sections of ASTR 101L, ASTR 101, and
ASTR 102, three semesters each year.
ASTRO111L: Educational Research in Radio Astronomy (ERIRA)
Between PROMPT and the other Skynet telescopes, UNC-Chapel Hill’s access to the SOAR and SALT
telescopes, and public data from NASA’s Swift and Fermi spacecraft, our students experience nearinfrared, optical, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma-ray astronomy – but not radio astronomy. UNC now
offers ERIRA as ASTR 111L: Educational Research in Radio Astronomy, a two-credit laboratory course
that satisfies UNC’s experiential education graduation requirement.
Radio astronomy is a wonderful teaching tool: Unlike optical astronomy, it can be done during the day
when students are naturally awake, and it can be done through most weather conditions. Coupled with
optical astronomy, it is a powerful package: It fosters a better understanding of the electromagnetic
spectrum and the important role that multi-wavelength observations play in 21st-century astronomy.
Furthermore, it exposes students to a wide range of astrophysical phenomena – solar system objects, starforming regions, supernova remnants, galaxies, quasars – and a wide range of emission processes –
blackbody, synchrotron, bremsstrahlung, radio and optical emission lines – in ways that are
fundamentally different than when they are experienced in only one waveband or the other. However,
due to the prohibitive cost of building,
operating, and maintaining sufficiently large
radio telescopes. most astronomy programs do
not teach radio astronomy in an observational
or laboratory setting. .
“[Thank you for] the opportunity to
participate in such an awesome program. I
not only learned so much about radio
astronomy, but I learned more about myself
and what I can do when pushed to the
limits…Never has a week been so exhausting,
yet so much fun! It was and probably will be
the highlight of my undergraduate
experience.” – Ben Andrews, ERIRA 2010
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Every summer since 1992, co-PI Reichart and a small group of radio astronomy educators from across the
country have conducted an intensive, one-week workshop at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
(NRAO) in Green Bank, WV called “Educational Research in Radio Astronomy”, or ERIRA.
Approximately fifteen students are selected on the basis of enthusiasm first, and background in astronomy
and science second. This makes for a diverse and highly motivated group. In recent years, most of our
applicants have come from UNC-Chapel Hill, other PROMPT Collaboration institutions, and North
Carolina high schools. We have also had active relationships with the University of Pittsburgh at
Bradford, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, the University
of Wyoming, Agnes Scott College, and Furman University.
The students are thrown head-first into observing from the first day, learning as they go how to use Green
Bank’s 40-foot diameter telescope and its neutral-hydrogen spectrometer. Working in five teams of three,
they map 21-cm radio emission over most of the Galactic plane and a few extragalactic and solar system
regions of interest. From the maps they produce, they “discover” supernova remnants, star-forming
regions, galaxies, and quasars, as well as solar system objects like the sun, the moon, and Jupiter.
Meanwhile, the students begin work on smaller, more research-oriented projects of their own choosing,
including:
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Producing a tri-color image of the Andromeda galaxy’s disk and estimating its mass
Measuring and interpreting the changing fading rate of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A
Detecting Jupiter and showing that it cannot be a thermal source
Constructing an antenna to detect Jupiter’s moon Io crashing through Jupiter’s magnetic field
Measuring the rotation curve and mass distribution of our galaxy using the 21-cm emission line of
neutral hydrogen
Producing a tri-color image of a portion of our galaxy and showing that it is warped
Measuring the surface temperature of the moon
“Deep” imaging of the Orion Nebula and the North Polar Spur
Using the 40-foot to predict sunspot numbers and other measures of solar activity
Constructing an antenna to predict sunspot numbers and other measures of solar activity
Constructing a 2-meter diameter radio telescope that is good enough to detect the sun
Since the development of PROMPT and Skynet, ERIRA has included a number of optical projects that
elaborate upon the experiments conducted in ASTR 101L:
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Learning how to make RGB images of deep sky objects
Measuring the light curves of rotating asteroids and variable stars
Measuring the mass of Jovian planets using Newton’s form of Kepler’s Third Law
Measuring the distance to solar system objects using simultaneous observations by Skynet telescopes
in different hemispheres
Typically, each student selects two or three of these radio and optical projects and are responsible for the
design of these projects as well as their observations. The teams present their results to their fellow
participants on the final day. During the week, the students also attend a crash course on basic radio
astronomy, special interest talks by the educators, and research talks by both educators and fellow
participants who have begun research at their home institutions. The students – as well as the educators –
get very little sleep. This is completely voluntary and a reflection of the enthusiasm of our participants:
they say they do not want to miss anything! Afterwards, many participants have declared that ERIRA
was one of the best experiences of their life. A number of participants have changed their courses of
study to pursue degrees in science after ERIRA. For the educators, it is a week of learning from each
other, brainstorming new approaches, and trying them out on the spot with the most receptive group of
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students they will ever find. In many ways, the educators benefit as much as the students do from the
experience. The majority of UNC’s Skynet team have attended ERIRA, as students, educators, or both.
C.2 Undergraduate Research
Over a dozen undergraduate students have worked with UNC’s Skynet team for research credit over the
past four years, authoring or co-authoring nine journal articles, two conference proceedings, over 150
observing reports, and at least three undergraduate honors theses. Undergraduate students also are
mentored on grant writing; to date, they have raised $79,900 in the form of 24 small grants and awards
that they applied for themselves.
The primary research initiative of UNC’s Skynet team is the observation and modeling of gamma-ray
burst (GRB) afterglows. The PROMPT robotic telescope array was constructed specifically for the
purpose of obtaining simultaneous multicolor photometry of GRB afterglows, beginning seconds after the
GRB detection and localization by satellites. With the development of our web-based data reduction
pipeline, which considerably simplifies and speeds up the often tedious task of image analysis, we are
now in a position to focus our efforts not only on analyzing data collected with PROMPT, but also data
mined from all published observations, photometric and spectroscopic, from radio to X-ray wavelengths,
and to begin compiling a catalog of GRB afterglow properties. This is the Afterglow Modeling Project
(AMP).
AMP will model, in a statistically self-consistent way, the time- and frequency-dependent emission and
absorption of every GRB afterglow observed since the first detection in 1997, using all published
observational data. The result will be an ever-growing catalog of GRB afterglow models that can itself be
analyzed to explore the range of and relationships among the physical properties of GRBs and their
environments. Adam Trotter’s PhD thesis describes the new statistical methodology we developed to
construct the afterglow models, and details of the models themselves, including: intrinsic afterglow
emission due to synchrotron radiation from shocks in ultrarelativistic jets; extinction due to dust in the
source frame of the GRB (which may change with time as the burst evolves), and in the Milky Way; and
absorption due to neutral hydrogen in the host galaxy and the intergalactic medium. This work will be
published as Papers I and II of the AMP series, in the Astrophysical Journal. AMP III will describe the
highly flexible Bayesian genetic algorithm, Galapagos, which we have developed to perform the model
fits themselves. AMP IV will present results of fits to all afterglows observed in the Beppo-SAX era
(1997-2000); AMP V the HETE era (2001-2004); and AMP VI+ annual catalogs of all bursts in the Swift
era onward (2005-present). Justin Moore’s PhD work will include developing a user-friendly database
and modeling interface that will streamline the process of collating data from various sources for each
burst, constructing customized emission and absorption models from modular components, and
organizing the results of model fitting for presentation and publication.
While several undergraduate and graduate students have already worked on modeling various GRB
afterglows with earlier versions of the model and software, the learning curve has been rather steep, and
results sometimes slow to come by. However, we are now poised to begin modeling bursts in earnest,
including preliminary analysis of afterglows in real time as data from PROMPT and other Skynet
telescopes come through our newly-developed reduction pipeline. AMP will provide a wealth of research
opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students for years to come, in a range of subdisciplines – from applied mathematics and computer science to theoretical astrophysics and cosmology.
More than half of the excitement is that we do not yet know what we will discover, or what new tools we
will have to invent, when we begin compiling and comparing models of past and future GRBs; this is,
literally, unexplored territory.
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D. UNC – NCA&T Partnership
The goals of the PAARE UNC-NCA&T
Partnership are:
Partnered
 To integrate NCA&T’s Ronald E.
GRAD SCHOOL/
Undergrad RA
McNair Observatory (REMO) into
STEM CAREER
Training &
UNC’s Skynet Robotic Telescope
GRB
Recruitment
Network, and make all of Skynet’s
Group
RESEARCH AND
Pyramid
resources available to NCA&T
ADVANCED COURSES
students and faculty;
ERIRA
 To transfer UNC’s introductory
ASTR
PHYS
astronomy courses and labs into the
102
280
NCA&T physics curriculum, and to
INTRODUCTORY
provide dedicated instructors for those
COURSES
ASTR 101
PHYS 101
courses;
& 101L
& New Lab
 To inspire and recruit talented
PROMPT
REMO
Skynet
SOAR, SALT
Marteena
NCA&T undergraduate and graduate
FACILITIES
Planetarium
Planetarium
NRAO 20m, Others
students, and provide them with
UNC-CH
NC A & T
opportunities to engage in fieldwork at
observatories, to conduct astronomical
research at both NCA&T and at UNC, and to present and publish their work at conferences and in
professional journals; and
 To establish a sustainable academic mentoring program for NCA&T students in astronomy and space
science, including guidance in higher-level coursework and research projects, leading to advanced
graduate studies and STEM careers.
D.1 Facilities
NCA&T recently completed construction of a 14”
robotic telescope and enclosure, on the grounds of the
492-acre University Farm, a site with relatively low
local light pollution south of Greensboro
(http://tomato.astro.unc.edu/remo/). Tentatively named
the Ronald E. McNair Observatory (REMO), in honor
of the NCA&T alumnus and NASA astronaut who
perished in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster,
this observatory will serve as the primary instrument for
ASTR 101L at the University, though students will have
access at various priority levels to all the instruments of
UNC’s Skynet Robotic Telescope Network.
We are requesting $3,500 to purchase an filter wheel, BVRI photometric filters, and a telescope focuser to
bring REMO up to the technical specifications necessary for inclusion in Skynet. Together with the other
Skynet observatories in North Carolina and Virginia (see table in §A), REMO will allow simultaneous
multi-wavelength observations of GRB afterglows and other phenomena at northern declinations,
effectively comprising a “PROMPT North” array. When not being used for ASTR 101L and GRB
research, REMO will be available to students and faculty at NCA&T, and to the entire Skynet
collaboration, for research in other areas, including 100-km-scale baseline parallax measurements of
Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and stellar occultation events. In return, NCA&T will be guaranteed 2%
uninterrupted access to all existing and pending Skynet resources maintained by UNC, including the
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PROMPT 16” and 32” instruments in Chile, the new PROMPT array
at Sliding Springs, Australia, and the 20-meter radio telescope at
NRAO in Green Bank, WV.The Marteena Observatory 14’’
telescope, which is situated on campus and substantially impaired by
urban light pollution, will continue to serve, without modifications, as
a non-robotic teaching instrument, providing students with hands-on
observing experience, a platform for developing and testing new
instrumentation, and EPO opportunities in the local community. The
NCA&T Planetarium will also remain in place for EPO activities, and
possibly for use in new or modified ASTR 101L labs.
D.2 Curriculum
UNC will transplant both its Introductory Astronomy (ASTR
101/102: 3 credit hours each) lecture courses and the Introductory
Astronomy Laboratory (ASTR 101L: 1 credit hour) into the physics
curriculum of NCA&T University. They will replace and augment the current one-semester Introduction
to Astronomy course (PHYS 101: 3 credit hours; new NCA&T course nomenclature to be determined).
While NCA&T has the potential to offer a wide range of advanced courses in space sciences and
engineering, it lacks the comprehensive introductory curriculum that is necessary to inspire and recruit
students into astronomy in the first place, as well as the faculty resources to teach both these large lecture
courses and the more advanced subjects. The PAARE grant will provide funding for two current
members of UNC’s Skynet team to teach introductory astronomy at NCA&T. Postdoctoral Fellow Adam
Trotter, who is currently completing his PhD in Astronomy at UNC, will teach both the ASTR 101 (Fall)
and ASTR 102 (Spring) lecture courses. Graduate Fellow Justin Moore, a current UNC graduate student
in Astronomy who has been heavily involved in developing the new labs, will teach ASTR 101L both
semesters. In addition, UNC will make the online (CCO) versions of these three courses available to the
students of NCA&T in the Fall, Spring and Summer semesters. These courses will serve as corecurriculum prerequisites for NCA&T undergraduate and graduate students pursuing majors physics with a
concentration in space science, and provide all curious students with a thorough overview of 21st-century
astronomy. This teaching partnership will afford PI Kebede the time to concentrate on developing and
teaching higher-level undergraduate and masters-level courses in the NCA&T space sciences curriculum.
Two positions each summer in the ERIRA (ASTR 111L) program at NRAO in Green Bank, WV, will be
reserved for NCA&T students, to be selected based on demonstrated enthusiasm and participation in
ASTR 101, 102 and/or 101L. NCA&T physics majors will also have the option of taking, as an elective,
ASTR 702 (High Energy Astrophysics) to be taught by co-PI Reichart at UNC.
D.3 UNC-NCA&T PAARE Research Fellowship Program
Undergraduate and graduate students from NCA&T will be recruited for PAARE Research Fellowships
in the GRB Afterglow Modeling Project (AMP: See §C.2). PAARE Postdoctoral Fellow Adam Trotter
and Graduate Fellow Justin Moore will supervise AMP-related research projects at both the UNC and
NCA&T campuses during the academic year.
PAARE will fund four Undergraduate Research Fellowship positions each summer, for NCA&T students
to work in UNC’s Skynet Lab on the Chapel Hill campus. Undergraduate Research Fellows will be
selected from those students who have successfully completed ASTR 101, 102, 101L and/or ERIRA;
candidates will be ranked by enthusiasm first, grades and background second. Successful PAARE
Undergraduate Research Fellows will be encouraged to continue work on their projects after the summer
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is over, under the guidance of Trotter at the NCA&T campus, and to take advanced courses, apply for
external funding and pursue graduate studies and STEM-related careers, under the guidance of PI Kebede.
PAARE will also fund one Graduate Research Fellowship position per year, to be appointed by PIs
Kebede and Reichart from those students pursuing master’s degrees in physics with a concentration in
space science at NCA&T who demonstrate exceptional enthusiasm and potential for careers in astronomy
research and education. The PAARE Graduate Research Fellow will be trained and supervised in AMP
research by Trotter, and will assist in the teaching of ASTRO 101L under the supervision of Moore. PIs
Kebede and Reichart will mentor PAARE Graduate Research Fellows in advanced coursework,
pedagogical techniques, fundraising strategies, and post-graduate career-track decisions.
Up to two PAARE Research Fellows per year will be invited to travel with UNC’s Skynet team to the
PROMPT site at Cerro Tololo, Chile, for field training in instrument construction, set-up and
maintenance. All PAARE Research Fellows will present the results of their research at the annual North
Carolina Astronomers Meeting (NCAM), which is typically held in Greensboro. One will be selected
each year to travel with PI Kebede to present his or her results at the general meeting of the American
Astronomical Society (AAS). All participants in the UNC-NCA&T PAARE Research Fellowship
program will be encouraged and trained to present and publish the results of their research in public
lectures and professional journals.
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