Quinn Brodsky (The Hockaday School), Garrett Gu (Texas Academy of Math and Science), Danita Mathew (Garland High School), Aaron McAnalley (Harmony Science Academy Euless), Swati Ravi (Greenhill School), Dylan Robertson (Plano Senior High School), Aniya Showers (Garland High School), Vijay Vuyyuru (Plano East Senior High School)

John Thompson Science Department, Plano East Senior High School 3000 Los Rios Blvd, Plano, TX 75074

Jingbo Ye Physics Department, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 USA 

Keri Christian (Clark High School), Allie Frymire (Greenhill School), Holly Hodge (Plano Senior High School), Rithvik Ramesh (IB World School at Plano East Senior High School), Daniel Sela (Yorktown Education), Jorden Terrazas (Harmony Science Academy Euless), Muaz Wahid (Parish Episcopal School), Grace Wolfe (All Saints Episcopal School)

Guven Yilmaz (Harmony Science Academy Euless)

Farley Ferrante (Southern Methodist University)

Quinn Brodsky (The Hockaday School), Garrett Gu (Texas Academy of Mathematics and
Science), Danita Mathew (Garland High School), Aaron McAnalley (Harmony Science Academy Euless), 
Swati Ravi (Greenhill School), Dylan Robertson (Plano Senior High School), Aniya Showers (Garland 
High School), Vijay Vuyyuru (Plano East Senior High School) QuarkNet Students

John Thompson
Science Department, Plano East Senior High School 3000 Los Rios Blvd, Plano, TX 75074

Southern Methodist University Summer 2017 – The SMU Particle Physics group sponsored its annual QuarkNet activities this summer for local high school physics teachers and students. The QuarkNet teachers’ workshop was held July 31 - Aug 4. In addition, there were 6-week-long summer research projects for high school students. This year there were 16 teachers from Dallas area public and private schools at the workshop while 2 teachers and 16 students performed summer research in SMU labs.

The primary goal of the SMU Summer QuarkNet Astrophysics program is to utilize data from the ROTSE-1 and ROTSE-3 telescopes to search for and identify short period variable stars.  The variations may be intrinsic, as in pulsating stars, or extrinsic, as with eclipsing binary stars.  Through studies of light curves obtained from the data, researchers (mostly ascending high shool seniors) select stars exhibiting periodicity and begin the process of isolating undiscovered variables from the data.

Data sets from public data releases, such as NSVS, CRTS, ASAS3, and SuperWASP, are also used for variable identification and for improving physics elements such as the period, minimum and maximum magnitude, epoch at minimum, and eclipse/rise duration.  Variable candidates not previously identified and catalogued are then submitted to the International Variable Star Index (VSX) for verification and approval.  Once accepted by VSX as discoveries and promoted to the live web site, the variable stars become publicly available to the community of variable star astronomers.

SMU QuarkNet students discovered a total of 18 variable stars during the summer of 2016.  Among the discoveries was a HADS(B) --- a high amplitude Delta Scuti variable exhibiting triple mode oscillations.  Out of nearly 400,000 variables currently catalogued in VSX, this is just the 86th such entry!

The report is in the attachment