ZrO is found in S-stars, which contain roughly equal amounts of carbon and oxygen in their atmospheres. The bands of zirconium oxide (ZrO) are a defining feature of the S stars. The S stars with the same temperature range as M stars can be distinguished by their spectra. S type stars contain absorption bands of zirconium oxide (ZrO) as well as the titanium oxide, which is a characteristic of M stars.

During TP-AGB, which last only a few hundred years, material from the core region may be mixed into the outer layers, changing the surface composition, a process referred to as dredge-up. Because of this dredge-up, AGB stars may become S-process elements in their spectra and strong dredge-ups can lead to the formation of carbon stars

We have extracted data of transition frequencies from other research papers, from credible scientists. We inputted this data into Excel, and then ran it through MARVEL. MARVEL gave us energy levels of ZrO, which we could then plot on graphs.

The paper was a quite an interesting part of ORBYTS. I think we pretty much all learnt that a scientific research paper has coding integrated into it, which came as quite a surprise. Our input when writing the paper included some contribution to the introduction and inputting the information that we had acquired from various other papers into a table.