Lucky kids

Some 3rd year students at Niels Bohr got time on the Nordic Optical Telescope as part of their course, and the first night they saw emission lines from a quasar--gravitationally lensed in 3 other places. There's a picture here.

A good instructor can give his students a project that is both within their competence and still in undiscovered country, but this group lucked out with something nice and spectacular. The fellow who originally found that quasar, when he heard about the students' findings, got excited and went back and found 3 more images.

This is quite a rich find.

In addition to the quasar itself, you also get other interesting information. A quasar varies in brightness and you can measure that there is a different arrival time for the light from the different observations, because the light paths are not of equal length. In this way you can calculate the geometric model of the light’s path. You can also calculate the mass of the galaxy cluster and you can calculate what is called the Hubble parameter, which tells us about the expansion of the universe.

It has been an incredible experience for the students. “It is amazing to be allowed to participate in something that is relevant to research so early in our education,” says Thejs Brinckmann, whose appetite for a future as a researcher has been whetted even more.

I spent a couple of months on an undergrad project too, but only came up with some minor results in compartmental analysis.