Tennessee teacher selected to work on NASA research

In her classroom at North Greene High School, Olivia Kuper uses a graph online to explain the relative heat of M-class stars, which she said are cooler than the Earth's sun and which she will be studying over the next year. (Cicely Babb/The Greeneville Sun via AP) In her classroom at North Greene High School, Olivia Kuper uses a graph online to explain the relative heat of M-class stars, which she said are cooler than the Earth's sun and which she will be studying over the next year. (Cicely Babb/The Greeneville Sun via AP)

By CICELY BABB / The Greeneville Sun via Associated Press January 30, 2022 3 min read

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – There are millions of stars in the night sky, but not all of them emit the same amount of light.

M-class stars, which are cooler and smaller than the sun, will be the focus of an astronomy research project led by North Greene High School chemistry teacher Olivia Kuper.

According to a press release from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Kuper is one of nine teachers selected from across the country to work with mentor astrophysicists at IPAC in the 2022 class of NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) educators.

“Our project will be looking for M-class stars that emit an excess of infrared light,” Kuper explained. “I’m not sure exactly how we are going to be doing it yet. We just had our kick-off meeting on (Jan. 16) on Zoom, and we have some more meetings coming up, but I know we will have access to data from the Spitzer and Gaia telescopes.”

Kuper, who has participated in the program previously, teaches chemistry and physical science at North Greene, but she said she will involve a small number of interested students who will be able to work with her before or after school on the project.