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PURPOSE
PURPOSE
The Allegheny Observers started with two high school volunteers, no formal training, and a lot of curiosity.
Today, we're Western Pennsylvania's largest high school astrophysics research group, with 60+ members spanning 15+ schools across the region. Members work on real research projects from day one: processing astronomical images, studying nebulae and black hole accretion disks, or any project they can think of using our PlaneWave CDK24 telescope. We use archival data from telescopes like Hubble, Chandra and James Webb. Graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon support advanced projects. We also travel annually to the National Green Bank Observatory to conduct overnight research projects such as mapping the Milky Way's rotation using hydrogen line analysis.
This work has taken students far beyond the lab, earning recognition at ISEF, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the International Outreach Award from CERN, DESY, and the University of Bonn. Competing is never mandatory, though. Plenty of members research purely for the love of it or to share their love of astronomy with younger children through outreach events.
No background in astrophysics/astronomy/coding is required!! We've built the mentorship, tools, and tutorials to bring any curious student up to speed. :)
FUN FACT
*all of the astro-images on this website were taken and processed by high school students!
LEARN MORE
Want to know what you're getting into?
Hear directly from our members as they discuss their research projects, failures, triumphs, and friendships made along the way.
Sarah Rached (freshman, Carnegie Mellon University) and Nadre Digbohou (12th grade, Fox Chapel High School) discussing their Allegheny Observatory-supported proposal and award for the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition, hosted by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics . 2026
Graduating Seniors Esme Offner (Pittsburgh Allderdice) and Gianna Kennelly (Oakland Catholic) talking about their work at the Allegheny Observatory. 2025
Marina Dunham (12th grade, Fox Chapel) & Genevieve Sweterlitsch (8th grade, Pittsburgh CAPA) talk about their work at the Allegheny Observatory. 2025
Conrad Davis (10th grade, Upper St. Clair) and Sarah Rached (12th grade, Fox Chapel) talking about their work at the Allegheny Observatory. 2025
Sarah Rached (11th grade, Fox Chapel High School) and Gianna Kennelly (12th grade, Oakland Catholic High School) talking about their work at Allegheny Observatory and its Moon Tree, a seedling grown from seeds that flew around the moon on NASA's Artemis I mission. 2024
Vincent Niedermayer (12th grade, Pittsburgh CAPA) talking about his research with the Allegheny Observatory using the TESS mission to observe exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than our sun. 2023
START ASTRO NOW
A collection of presentations & tutorials from us!
VIDEOS
AstroImageJ tutorial for taking monochrome telescope frames and stacking into "master" frames.
AstroImageJ tutorial for generating light curves from raw photometry data!
What is this?
AstroImageJ (AIJ) is a free image processing software built specifically for astronomy.
It allows us to do...
Image Processing: Sharpen raw telescope images by removing camera noise using master bias, dark, and flat frames.
Plate Solving: Identifies coordinates of the sky in your images using the online Astrometry.net portal.
Time-Series Differential Photometry: Tracks the brightness of celestial objects (like exoplanets, variable stars, or asteroids) over a sequence of images.
Light Curve Plotting & Modeling: Plots the brightness data into light curves and allows you to fit exoplanet transit models to your data to calculate planetary sizes and orbital parameters.
MORE VIDEOS
(Pitt.edu/non-Youtube links)
Google Sites
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