Posted on Mar 30, 2006

With a diameter of 1000 feet, the Arecibo radio telscope is the largest telescope in the world. Mahmood and Koopmann used it to detect the neutral hydrogen gas in nearby galaxies as part of the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey.
Mahmood participated in the project through a summer research fellowship and a Scholars sophomore project. His research fellowship and travel were made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Last summer, Union hosted the first NSF-sponsored ALFALFA undergraduate workshop to give undergraduates involved in the project the opportunity to exchange experiences with their peers from throughout the country.
In addition to Mahmood, participants included Michael Gillin '08, Jay Read '07 and Luther Vucic '07.
“The highlight of the meeting was a two-hour remote observing run at Arecibo, in which the undergraduates operated the telescope from a Union College physics and astronomy classroom,” Koopmann reported. “The students targeted a group of galaxies to search for evidence of gravitational interactions between the galaxies.”