NDP To Collaborate With Harvard On Astrophysics Program

Notre Dame Prep has been selected to participate in an astrophysics program through Harvard University that will enable students to access sophisticated telescopes and software for the study of planets and stars outside our own solar system.

In a field test for the "Laboratory for the Study of Exoplanets: Fostering Data Literacy" program, students in science teacher Sue McGinnis' astronomy class will participate in a two-week program sponsored by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the spring of 2014. The program will allow NDP juniors and seniors to access telescopes remotely online and use image-processing software and interactive models to detect and describe other worlds' orbiting planets beyond the Earth's own planetary system, typically called exoplanets.

Students will choose from a menu of target stars, take images with the telescope, measure the brightness of these stars, and from the telltale, periodic dip in the brightness of their chosen star build up a portrait of the transiting planet. Each student will be able to analyze an entire transit or combine a few points of data with others in their class.

According to officials at Harvard, interactive models will help students predict what they might expect to find and interpret what they do find, and once students collect and analyze their own data, they can begin to compare, combine and communicate their findings with other students, other schools, and with researchers at the Science Education Department of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.