Contact:

Tomeika Blackwell
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5687

August 23, 2004 - RELEASE: 04-048

CALIFORNIA SENIOR AWARDED DAVIDSON FELLOW USING GODDARD DATA

Seventeen-year-old senior, Harish Khandrika, from La Jolla High School in La Jolla California, has been named a 2004 Davidson Fellow for his analysis of Centaurus A data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite.

Khandrika will receive $25,000 in scholarship money for his scientific project called “Analysis of X-rays from the Core of Radio-Galaxy Centaurus A.” Not only is the RXTE data housed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, but the Center operates and distributes the data to the community.

"Educational outreach is a major part of the NASA Rossi Explorer mission," said RXTE Project Scientist Dr. Jean Swank of NASA Goddard. "School children around the country learn math and science skills from lesson plans based on data from space science missions. Harish went one step further and used publicly available data from our web
sites to perform professional-level research. His passion for astronomy and his achievement makes our job at NASA all the more rewarding."

RXTE observes the fast moving, high-energy worlds of black holes, neuron stars, X-ray pulsars and bursts of X-rays that randomly and often periodically light up for weeks or months at a time only to grow mysteriously dim for months and sometimes years.

The RXTE data allowed him to analyzed high-energy radiations from nearby Centaurus A (Cen A) galaxy also known as NGC 5128. Cen A, is a big, bright, dramatic galaxy, know as a cannibal galaxy. It has a strong source of radio radiation and is the nearest radio galaxy.

Cen A is ten million light years away -- that is nearly 10 times farther than Andromeda. The galaxy is so bright that it can be seen with a pair of binoculars on a dark night from the southern United States. Studying radiations from active galactic nuclei provides scientists with the unique insights into the physical processes occurring at the core.

“I analyzed these radiations using available NASA tools and scripts I developed. The Cen A spectrum exhibits hard X-ray emission providing strong evidence of a super-massive black hole accreting material in the core,” explained Khandrika. The spectrum obtained from his research will be combined with the spectrum from an existing observation of the galaxy by the European satellite Integral to obtain a broadband spectrum.

“Harish began working with me as a sophomore in high school. He came to me out of the blue asking is he might do something in astrophysics that could be his science fair project. His rapid comprehension of RXTE analysis software and his dedication over the summer produced a prize winning entry,” said Dr. Richard Rothschild of the University of California who serves as a mentor for Khandrika.