Student on fast track to the stars

Idea wins access to famed telescope

At age 17, Melissa Ilardo would be forgiven for kicking off summer vacation at a local mall or the neighborhood pool.

Instead, the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics student will be manning the controls at one of the world's most sensitive telescopes.

The rising high school senior has snagged what hundreds of professional astronomers covet: observation time at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Ilardo won by pitching a research project with real scientific merit, said Robert Brown, director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which runs the telescope.

"She's got a very exciting science idea," said Brown, who said about 600 astronomers and graduate students apply to use Arecibo each year, but only 300 get the chance.

Ilardo wasn't aiming for anything so big when she got her first taste of astronomy two years ago. But she got inspired.

In 2004, the Charlotte resident enrolled in the Talent Identification Program, Duke University's summer camp for academically gifted students. She spent her two weeks at Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute or PARI, the radio astronomy outpost a retired Greensboro businessman is building in Western North Carolina.

There, she got a peek at today's best theories on how our universe was born, the life cycles of stars and galaxies and the techniques astronomers use to unlock their secrets. And she got to take a brief spin on a radio telescope, a device that collects radio waves rather than visible light to better understand celestial bodies.

Her enthusiasm quickly impressed her teachers. "When you gave her a project to do, she went at it with full force," said Joseph Masiero, a University of Hawaii graduate student who was on the TIP faculty that year.

It was as much fun as work for a teenager who had long excelled in math classes and favors French pedicures and Birkenstocks. The only child of two accountants returned home with a new interest in the cosmos and a desire to spend more time around really smart kids.

"The conversations we had were so much deeper than what I usually had," she said.

Ilardo left a private school in Charlotte for "Science and Math," the statewide magnet school for high achievers in Durham. When her physics teacher in a research class ordered up an original research project, she did some digging, bounced ideas off several of her TIP teachers and settled on a question about pulsars.

Pulsars are hugely dense stars that have collapsed upon themselves near the end of their life spans. They spin very quickly, emitting signals that radio telescopes can intercept. Some sporadically emit huge pulses of energy, too.

Astronomers measure energy emitted by all sorts of pulsars and have noticed that some lose energy faster than others. Ilardo wondered whether those losing energy quickest make the big pulses.

She figured she should look for herself. A pulsar expert that PARI recommended to her encouraged her to do it right --at a major research observatory. With only days to meet Arecibo's deadline, she worked up her pitch. It won.

For two-hour stints over three days this month, Ilardo will sit in the command center at Arecibo and record radio signals emitted from three pulsars on the quick-to-lose-energy list. If they pulse, she'll have evidence of a new category of stars.

The National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, funded by the National Science Foundation, will cover the $2,000-an-hour cost to operate the telescope and otherwise subsidize Ilardo's trip.

"Most students have a hard time coming up with projects," Jonathan Bennett, her physics teacher, said.

Not this one.

"I'm very excited," Ilardo said.