Congratulations to undergraduate research student Bennett Kirby (second-year student @ High Point U.) for receiving the HPU Department of Physics Outstanding Researcher Award! Bennett began doing research his first week of college, analyzing TESS light curves of compact hot subdwarf + white dwarf binaries. He learned how to write Python scripts to download the light curves, measure the arrival times of each orbit’s flux maximum, and create O-C diagrams to look for small period changes due to secular evolution, orbiting exoplanets, and other effects. After that, he started work analyzing the pulsations of the radial-mode sdBV star BPM 36430. Using time-series spectroscopy from SOAR/Goodman, he measured a 4 km/s semi-amplitude in the radial velocity curve due to the pulsations. He wrote a published a short article in Research Notes of the AAS on this finding. Congratulations, Bennett!
