Penn State Senior Uses Chandra Observatory to Study Oldest and Most Distant Quasars

24 March 2004 -- Lee Bassett, a Penn State senior from Quakertown, Pennsylvania, recently has completed research analyzing some of the results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the world's most powerful imaging X-ray telescope. Bassett, a physics major in Penn State's Schreyer Honors College and a recipient of the prestigious 2003 Annenberg Marshall Scholarship, spent a year and a half using Chandra to study quasars, which are some of the brightest and most distant objects ever observed in the universe. His findings, which are significant because they present new data about quasars, will be published in a paper in The Astronomical Journal within the next few months.

Specifically, Bassett studied a set of seven new Chandra observations of quasars. "The purpose of my research is to try to figure out the energy-generation mechanics of quasars, or what produces the X-rays and other high-energy forms of radiation emitted by quasars," he said. Bassett collaborated with Penn State professors of astronomy and astrophysics W. Niel Brandt and Donald Schneider, and Gordon Garmire, the Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State.

The Chandra Observatory was conceived and designed in part by Garmire, and it is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Quasars are distant bodies that produce enormous amounts of energy and light. They are powered by massive black holes at their centers, which draw in large amounts of material that collide and, as a result, produce huge amounts of energy and radiation. "They emit a lot of X-rays, which are only produced in the hottest, most extreme environments in the universe--like right next to a black hole," Bassett said. "These particular objects have never been studied by their X-rays, so essentially my paper is presenting new data."

Bassett has been studying what astronomers call high-redshift quasars, which are more distant than most other quasars. This also means that Bassett is looking further back in time to the beginnings of the universe, because the farther from Earth an object is, the longer it takes for its light to reach an observer on Earth. Bassett said, "The universe is 13.6 billion years old, and the quasars that I study show the universe at about 20 percent of its current age. They are about 9 or 10 billion light-years away, so we are seeing them as they appeared 9 or 10 billion years ago."

In July 2003, Bassett was invited to present his research at a conference at Princeton called "AGN (active galactic nuclei) Physics with the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey)." Other presenters included Brandt, Schneider, and assistant professor of astronomy Michael Eracleous, as well as astronomers from other research universities in the country. "I got to meet 50 other scientists that work on this topic, and there aren't many of them in the world," Bassett said. "I got to meet the people who wrote the papers I had been reading."

Bassett said his research has had a huge impact on his education. "Scientific research experience is so different from taking science classes. There are no solution manuals that have the answers. The research techniques I've learned have been invaluable," he said. "It's great to be able to investigate and come up with new knowledge for the world to learn."

Bassett will graduate this semester with a B.S. in physics and Honors in astronomy and astrophysics. After graduation, he will attend Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, with all fees, living expenses, books, research costs, and travel expenses paid by the British government, thanks to his Marshall Scholarship. He plans to study quantum mechanics and particles at Cambridge. He said, "It's funny because I'm going from studying really big stuff, like quasars and galaxies, to really small stuff, like elementary particles."

In addition to the Marshall Scholarship, Bassett is a Braddock Scholar at Penn State and a recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for Excellence. Bassett is vice-president of the Penn State Society of Physics Students, and he is also a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, a national physics honors society. He is a volunteer in Habitat for Humanity, for which he led a group trip to South Carolina during spring break in 2003. He also is an avid surfer and studied abroad at the University of Sydney in Australia during the Spring 2002 semester.

Bassett is also an accomplished musician. He plays the piano as a soloist and an accompanist, and he provides worship music for the Lutheran Campus Ministry services at the Frank and Sylvia Pasquerilla Spiritual Center at Penn State. Additionally, he plays the tuba in several ensembles. Bassett is a graduate of Quakertown High School. He is the son of Jerry and Janet Bassett and the oldest of three children.

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CONTACT:
Lee Bassett
lcb138@psu.edu
814-862-3515