For his REU, Larry Camarota went to Brigham Young University. While there, Larry was able to climb mountains, visit Vegas, and, oh yeah, study stars. He applied to almost a dozen different programs during the months of December and January. He was accepted into the Brigham Young REU late in March.





While at BYU, Larry analyzed the cluster NGC7039 for variable stars. Variable stars are stars that have non-constant intensity. Most of these stars are variable because of the K mechanism (Helium ionizes. Ionized Helium is opaque. Light pressure causes stars to expand, cooling them enough for the Helium to de-ionize, and become transparent). The second most common type of variable star is the eclipser: when one star in a binary system passes in front of the other, the luminosity decreases for the period of the eclipse. Larry operated the BYU telescope to take pictures of many objects in the night sky. Additionally, he tested recently developed software which allowed him to quickly clean up and analyze large numbers of stars in a single frame (NGC7039 had over 300 visible stars per frame). He was able to develop some mathematical models to more accurately find multi-periodic variable stars.

Larry didn’t spend all his time with his head in the stars. In Utah, there are a lot of mountains. Almost every weekend, the BYU REU program went on a hike up one of those mountains. He also went with some of his friends on an overnight trip to Las Vegas. The most interesting thing outside of the program, however, was the culture of Provo and Brigham Young University. A large majority of the people at Brigham Young are members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon). The culture was a little strict on personal grooming, but over all, the atmosphere was nice.